David Gordon Green has been throwing himself into projects at a tremendous rate recently. We saw the trailer for his Paul Rudd/Emile Hirsch comedy**Prince Avalanche **at the weekend, and he already has another film, Joe, set to hit the festival circuit. Today brings word that he’s also gearing up Manglehorn, and wants Al Pacino to star.
It’s early days for talks on this, but Gordon Green wrote the script with Paul Logan and the pair – along with backers Worldview Entertainment – want Pacino to play the titular character.
A.J. Manglehorn is a low-key guy in a small town who harbours a dark criminal past. Green told Deadline that it’s, “the story of a guy who gave up the love of his life for a life of crime and now he regrets it as the world crumbles in front of him. His profession as a locksmith is symbolic of a guy who’s trying to find the key to put his life back together. It’s a love story, the choices you make in your youth and the situations you set up for yourself: you end up sitting alone at the dinner table talking to a cat! I do think there is a beautiful humour in this.”
Green and his producers will be drumming up sales at the Cannes Film Festival Market and scoring Pacino’s commitment would help that no end.
As mentioned above, the writer/director has another offbeat drama set for release with Joe, in which Nic Cage plays an ex-con who becomes the unlikely role model for a 15-year-old boy. That one doesn’t yet have a UK release date.