Filmmaker circles Atlanta Olympics bombing drama…
Deadline hears that ‘Captain Phillips’ and ‘Bloody Sunday’ helmer Paul Greengrass is looking to take the director’s chair for ‘The Ballad of Richard Jewell,’ a drama about the 1996 Olympic Park Bombing in Atlanta.
As previously reported, the film is being developed as a vehicle for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill lined and is based on Marie Brenner’s 1997 Vanity Fair article of the same name.
Hill would be playing Jewell, the security guard who discovered a suspicious backpack in the Olympics compound and helped clear bystanders – only to be vilified as a possible terrorist. DiCaprio will take the role of a Southern attorney who knew Jewell casually, and guided him through the demoralizing nightmare.
Should Greengrass sign on to direct, he will be working from a script by Billy Ray (‘Captain Phillips,’ ‘The Hunger Games,’ ‘State of Play’).