Years ago the news of a team-up between Clint Eastwood and someone like Jonah Hill would probably have meant something along the lines of The Rookie. We live in very different times, however, and with Eastwood now a serious Oscar-bait director, the project on the table is The Ballad Of Richard Jewell: the story of the Olympic security guard who foiled a terrorist bomb plot. Eastwood's **J. Edgar **and Hill's Wolf Of Wall Street compatriot Leonardo DiCaprio is also attached to star.
Billy Ray (Captain Phillips) wrote the screenplay based on a 1997 Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner. The story revolves around the '96 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Jewell was initially hailed as a hero for finding a suspicious backpack in the sports compound and helping clear bystanders before the bomb contained within it detonated, killing two people on the day and inuring 111 others.
But soon the Atlanta Journal Constitution, working on a law enforcement tip, reported that Jewell fit the profile of a possible bomber and the media descended, camping outside the house where Jewell lived with his mother and spurring an FBI investigation. The story became a national scandal, even though Jewell was cleared three months later.
Hill is attached to play Jewell and DiCaprio would be Watson Bryant, the unknown lawyer, more used to real estate work, who helped defend Jewell and clear his name.
Following the mega-hit American Sniper Eastwood is well-placed to choose his projects and is said to be extremely keen on the Jewell story. The only possible spanner in the works is that's it's being set up at Fox, whereas Eastwood almost exclusively works at Warner Bros. The two studios are currently in cautious negotiations to see how they might share the project.