Clearly it's the day for projects that have been through the hands of more than one filmmaker to finally start to coalesce. We brought you an update to Triple Frontier and there has been movement on The True American, with Mark Ruffalo and The Big Sick's Kumail Nanjiani in talks to star for director Pablo Larraín.
The movie will draw from Anand Giridharadas' non-fiction tome, subtitled Murder And Mercy In Texas. It’s the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan (Nanjiani), a Bangladesh Air Force officer who longed to live and work in America’s technology sector. He made it to the States, finding temporary work in a Dallas minimart, which is where cruel fate intervened. A few days after September 11, 2001, self-styled "American Terrorist" Mark Stroman (Ruffalo) walked into the store and shot him.
Some stories would end there, but the astonishing tale isn’t done: as Stroman sat on death row for his crime and Bhuiyan struggled to recuperate from injuries that had maimed and nearly killed him, the Bangladesh native decided to seek out his attacker and grant him forgiveness, while starting a campaign against the death penalty in their state. Stroman, for his part, strove to become a better man in prison.
This is one that, like Frontier, was originally intended for Kathryn Bigelow, who had lined up Tom Hardy and Riz Ahmed as the leads. Larraín took it over last year and is now zeroing on his chosen cast.
Ruffalo next returns as Dr. Bruce Banner in Avengers: Infinity War, out on 26 April. Nanjiani is present and correct in the latest series of Silicon Valley, which kicks off this weekend. He's also developing a variety of film and TV projects in the wake of Sick's success, and appears in the new comedy Duck Butter.
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