Will Smith, Sony acquire Katrina story

[Alex Marques]

Any Will Smith movie thats deep will bring light to any issue. This is a tragic scene (the aftermath)

[Ale]

Will Smith Kicking ‘American Can’ With Ed Zwick; ‘The Accountant’ Also On Ledger?

EXCLUSIVE: As Tom Cruise today looks to strengthen his box office foothold with Oblivion after a huge overseas opening last weekend, I’ve been wondering when Will Smith was going to start cranking them out again. Looks like he’s chosen this week to really get back into the mix. He signed to do the Warner Bros grifter pic Focus, and I’m told that Sony Pictures and his Overbrook Entertainment partner James Lassiter and Jada Pinkett Smith have revived American Can, and are now looking to Ed Zwick to direct Smith in a reluctant hero role that seems like a tailor-fit. He will play John Keller, a real guy who returned from Gulf War service looking for a new challenge, and found one after Hurricane Katrina devastated his home city of New Orleans. He found a boat and was moving to safety when he saw a blind elderly woman, stranded and calling for her son. Knowing she would certainly die if he passed by, Keller brought her back to safety in the American Can building. Shortly after, he found many more stranded seniors, and brought each of them back, around 244 in total, to American Can, a building that at least was dry. It was tricky business, but using his resourcefulness and his military training to get food drops to feed his new friends, he kept them alive and eventually found enough boats to lead them all to safety. The script was written by Adetoro Makinde and John Lee Hancock. Hancock originally intended to direct it, but the project languished while Smith did other things and Hancock went off to direct Saving Mr. Banks at Disney with Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson, poised to follow that with The Highwaymen, with Liam Neeson and Woody Harrelson being courted to play the Texas Rangers who hunted down Bonnie & Clyde.

I’m told Smith will likely do this film after Focus, in which he’ll play a veteran con man who mentors a young female newcomer to the grifter game for directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra. This is the project that Ben Affleck was going to star in, before dropping out to focus on the adaptation of the Dennie Lehane novel Live By Night, which Affleck will direct.

There has also been talk that Smith is once again eyeing The Accountant, another project he’d previously circled, back when it was at Warner Bros and Mel Gibson was going to direct him. I’d heard that this project was coming around again at Media Rights Capital with Sony, but PR for MRC denied it yesterday. Now, they are saying they only denied the Will Smith part of it, but since I see a story this morning about MRC’s involvement on my sister publication Variety (without any substantive cast details), I am going to remember now and in the future that my sources are more believable than PR people, and just put it out there. I do believe that Smith is once again eyeing this thriller about a government accountant who doubles as an assassin. Gibson is no longer involved. Bill Dubuque wrote the script.

I’m not saying Smith has to prove his viability. MIB3 grossed $624 million worldwide (I don’t know if that made it profitable but it is a huge gross), and he next stars in with son Jaden in the M. Night Shyamalan-directed After Earth, which I hear turned out well. He throws a lot of effort into Overbrook producing projects like Karate Kid and the upcoming Annie. But when they ask who’s the world’s biggest male box office star, I guess I just would like to see him make a better case for that crown, which means more films with Smith front and center.

Smith and Zwick are repped by CAA.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/will-smith-kicking-american-can-with-ed-zwick-the-accountant-also-on-ledger/

[Radewart]

Wonderful to see Will focusing on his own career again, and not directing that awful sounding Cain and Abel movie.

[Radewart]

I usually don't like biopics, especially cheesy uplifting ones, but this guy's story is pretty awesome.

http://badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=214908723486

[gosia]

Looks like it's finally happening!

TORONTO - Ex-marine John Keller says he wasn't trying to be a hero when he used a kayak, a hotwired boat and an air mattress — along with his smarts and brawn — to fend off thugs and save more than 200 people in his New Orleans apartment building during Hurricane Katrina.

"I really didn't think about what I was doing, I was just doing it," the six-foot-seven, 260-pound New Orleans native said in a recent telephone interview.

"I didn't really think about it until I read the paper and it listed blow by blow what I did. I was like, 'Damn, I didn't really think I was doing all this.'"

Keller's Herculean story is one of two in the first episode of Proper Television's new series "Hardcore Heroes," which premieres Monday at 8 p.m. ET on History.

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Overbrook Entertainment have also obtained the rights to his story for a film that's set to star Will Smith. Producer Adetoro Makinde co-wrote the movie, which is titled "American Can" and is due to start production next year.

"I think the most beautiful thing about it is, if Will Smith plays me in one weekend in front of 19 million people around the world, people will know what happened in New Orleans and it will definitely shine a big, bright light on the Hurricane Katrina event," said Keller.

"It'll reach the masses with Will Smith, that's for sure."

As "Hardcore Heroes" shows, the former Reconnaissance Marine was living in American Can Apartments when Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005. The 45-year-old had ignored evacuation orders because he'd never fled from a hurricane before and figured the building would be fine.

"Plus I'm a carpenter, so I had my chainsaws and all that stuff," said Keller. "So when the storm hits you go out and you clear off the debris off people's houses and you make some money in the process."

But when the levees broke, about three metres of water surrounded the building and residents couldn't get out.

Keller sprung into action when looters kicked in his door.

After taking down the thugs on his own, he paddled a neighbour's kayak through treacherous waters for several hours to try to find loved ones. He then returned to the building and took down more gun-toting thugs, swam to get food, supplies and medicine for neighbours, and convinced a military evacuation chief to help some residents.

He also put ailing neighbours on an air mattress and swam them to an evacuation zone, carried those in wheelchairs to rescue choppers on the roof, and hotwired a boat to get other residents to a rescue embankment.

"An old man told me, 'Young blood, you could've died doing all that stuff,'" he said. "I said, 'Well I never thought about that.'"

Keller thinks his efforts — which unfolded over several days — pale in comparison to what many members of the military go through in war zones.

"Compared to the Desert Storm/Desert Shield events, that was nothing," he said. "Like, I didn't have 400 people shooting AK-47s at me, I didn't have road-side bombs, I didn't have insurgents."

Still, he concedes he was a natural-born leader.

"Like they say, if you don't bite when you're a puppy, you won't bite when you're a dog," he said. "I went to boarding school because I didn't listen to my mom.

"I always did my own thing, I guess."

Keller still lives in the same building, but Katrina taught him to evacuate any hurricane over a Category 2.

He hasn't seen the episode of "Hardcore Heroes" on him yet, but he figures he'll probably "be crying like a baby" when he does and hears the praise his neighbours have for him.

"It's like they hold John Keller in a higher regard than I hold myself," he said.

As for the upcoming movie on his story, Keller said he's met Smith several times now.

He's hoping the movie will tell a bigger story than just his.

"Adetoro, when she first acquired my life rights, she said, 'When I tell this story, what do you want me to do, what do you want me to say, what do you want this do to?'

"I said, 'I want you to tell the world how America treated its citizens on that day in New Orleans,' and in her script she did that."

Edited January 4, 2014 by gosia

[Ale]

While You Wait for Will Smith's Katrina Drama, 'American Can,' Watch the Real Can Man Tell His Story on Sunday

http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/while-you-wait-for-will-smith-katrina-drama-american-can-watch-the-real-can-man-tell-his-story-on-sunday-20150708