Given that he’s played several characters in the past who were looking for redemption – most famously in Jerry Maguire and Frank TJ Mackey in Magnolia – it’s no surprise that Tom Cruise would get interested in a new script pitch from Cars co-writer Dan Fogelman that features just that sort of story. And with Cruise attached to star, it’s equally not shocking that Warner Bros. would shell out a healthy $2 million for the rights to the as-yet-untitled tale.
If it gets made, the film will find a politician caught up in an affair that sees his carefully orchestrated life suddenly in tatters. Looking to lie low until the dust settles, he returns to his hometown to see old friends, repair broken relationships and confront his past demons.
Cruise, of course, is a known quantity, and while he’s not quite the box office draw he once was, his involvement in a lower budgeted drama like this should help it navigate its way through the development forest. And Fogelman is developing quite the reputation: aside from the work on both Cars and Cars 2 for Pixar, he wrote chunks of Bolt and Tangled for Disney, Seth Rogen/Barbra Streisand road trip comedy My Mother’s Curse and his script Crazy, Stupid, Lov****e is on the way from Warners this summer with Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling as the leads…