Elmore Leonard’s work can be a tough cookie to crack on screen. For every great example (Out of Sight), there’s a failure (The Big Bounce), and the field in between is littered with the good to the dodgy. Now Walter Matthau’s son Charlie will be hoping to score a winner, wrangling William H Macy to star in **Freaky Deaky.
Written by Leonard in 1988, Deaky follows a pair of former radical types who specialised in bomb making reuniting for a big payday job. And then there’s the close-to-retirement bomb squad officer who has to tack them down.
Matthau, who also penned the script, isn’t exactly known for his crime drama work: so far his output has been limited to virginity-centric rom-com Her Minor Thing starring Estrella Warren (which, weirdly, this writer caught two minutes of on cable just a few days ago) and upcoming jazz musical Baby-O, which boasts Eric Roberts, Billy Burke and Theresa Russell among its cast.
But with Macy involved, chances are he might attract some decent co-stars for this one. Either way, he’ll start shooting next year.