Matt Damon has always kept his hometown of Boston close to heart, whether in the breakout “Good Will Hunting,” taking a role in “The Departed” or developing a movie with Ben Affleck about the city’s most famous criminal figure, Whitey Bulger. And should it all work out, Damon will once again help tell a story about his hometown, one that shook the city to its core.
Jeff Sneider of The Wrap tweeted yesterday: “Matt Damon is the front runner to star in Tom McCarthy’s Boston Globe/Catholic Church movie but he still hasn’t read the script…” And it’s easy to see why he might be interested. The highly charged drama is aiming to be an “All The President’s Men“-style movie that will center on the journalists at the Boston Globe — Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer and Matt Carroll, Spotlight Team Editor Walter “Robby” Robinson, Special Projects Editor Ben Bradlee Jr. and Globe Editor Marty Baron — who discovered and exposed that Cardinal Bernard Law, America’s Senior Catholic Prelate, was protecting priests accused of assault by moving them to different parishes where they offended again.
The reporting won the journalists a Pulitzer Prize in 2003, and McCarthy has been developing the project for a while now, working on the script with Josh Singer (“The West Wing,” “Fringe“). Earlier this year when DreamWorks boarded the movie, it was reported that an A-list star was looking at the project. Guess we know who that is. Whether he comes on board remains to be seen, but it would be strong addition to what already sounds like a very promising project.
