Clint Eastwood Might Direct That Olympics Bombing Movie After All

Clint Eastwood Might Direct That Olympics Bombing Movie After All

By Ben Pearson/April 19, 2019 4:30 pm EST

Over the next several years, directors like Paul Greengrass (Jason Bourne), Ezra Edelman (O.J.: Made in America), and Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven) came and went as potential directors, but now Eastwood has circled back around and is looking to make it his next directing project. Learn more about the story below.

Eastwood was originally looking to make The Ballad of Richard Jewell back in 2015 as his follow-up to the massively successful American Sniper, but he ended up making another true-life story, Sully, instead. Now Deadline says he’s back in the mix to direct once again.

Billy Ray (Shattered Glass, The Hunger Games) wrote the script, which is based on a 1997 Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner. The story follows Richard Jewell, a security guard who spotted a suspicious backpack at the Olympics that contained a pipe bomb. He ended up saving innumerable bystanders and was quickly called a hero…until he became a suspect. That’s when the media turned on him, indicating that he’d planted the bomb himself and then “found” it just to make himself look good. Those accusations were totally unfounded, but it took the FBI three months to fully clear Jewell’s name, and at that point he’d become one of the most hated people in the country because of the media pile-on. His reputation never fully recovered.

Hill was originally set to play Jewell and DiCaprio was going to play his lawyer, an acquaintance who concentrated on real estate law but made an exception to help and quickly realized they were in way over their heads. Deadline says that no actors are attached and that Eastwood is looking to set his own cast and begin filming this summer. DiCaprio is still on board as a producer.