His tenure as Batman may be hanging in the balance, but Ben Affleck is nevertheless keeping busy. Currently exec-producing and filming the pilot for Boston-set TV crime drama City On A Hill, he also already has Triple Frontier, Torrance and The Last Thing He Wanted in post-production. Now he's signed on to star in and produce I Am Still Alive, a thriller based on the betselling YA novel by Kate Alice Marshall.
The book's story centers on Jess, a girl who loses her mother in a car crash and is subsequently sent to live with her estranged survivalist father (Affleck's role) in the remote Canadian wilderness. But when trouble from her father's past shows up on some violent business, Jess has to employ some impromptu survivalist techniques of her own.
There's no director attached yet, and the crucial casting of Jess has yet to be worked out, but Lori Evans Taylor is in place to write the script. A relative newcomer to screewriting, Taylor has a background as a producer of "wild" TV shows like Animal Planet's Untamed And Uncut and Paramount's 1000 Ways To Die.
I Am Still Alive is coming together under Affleck's Pearl Street Films banner, with studio Universal winning a fraught bidding war to oversee and distribute. There's no release date so far, but Marshall's novel is published in the UK by Viking.
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