Even as he fights evil and possible Batsuit chafing in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Ben Affleck is keeping one eye on his next job, which will be Dennis Lehane adaptation Live By Night. He’s begun casting on the film, hiring Zoe Saldana, Sienna Miller and Elle Fanning for three key roles.
The plot finds Lehane taking some of the characters from previous novel The Given Day and tracking them into the Prohibition era. Our main focus is Joe Coughlin, a police captain’s son who finds himself caught up in organised crime as part of a rum-smuggling organization that transports booze from Cuba to Boston via Florida.
Miller is set to play Emma, a girl Joe falls for and who just so happens to be the girlfriend of his mobster boss. Awkward! Saldana will be Graciella Suarez, who Coughlin meets in Tampa when he moves into the Floridian crime structure. Fanning, meanwhile, will be sheriff’s daughter Loretta Figgis, an aspiring actress who finds herself in a world of trouble.
It’s no shock to see Affleck back in Lehane’s crime-ridden territory: after all, he launched his directorial career to great acclaim with a take on the writer’s 1998 book Gone Baby Gone. But this one's likely to take a while, what with all that Bat-work, so we're guessing that it will land sometime in 2016 rather than next year.