Point Blank Productions has recruited Dear John director Lasse Hallström to direct Patrick Dempsey (Grey's Anatomy) in the coming-of-age story Tom's Dad. According to Variety, Martin Casella's script sets the film in 1962 Las Vegas, where " a successful character film actor and a comedy vaudevillian nightclub performer at a crossroads because the changing styles of comedy is making him obsolete. His situation's complicated by the arrival of his long-estranged young son." The plot actually sounds very similar to the animated film The Illusionist, though it remains intriguing in both cases.
Dempsey will next star in Transformers 3 and the indie comedy Flypaper. Hallström is attached to direct adaptations of the novels The Danish Girl and Salmon Fishing in Yemen.