A long-developing project may be undergoing an interesting director shift. After Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker, she was understandably in demand for a number of follow-up projects. She and Hurt Locker screenwriter Mark Boal zeroed in on a crime drama called Triple Frontier. Set in a border zone of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil known as “la triple frontera,” the movie would revolve around this haven for organized crime. A number of actors expressed interest in starring, from Johnny Depp to Tom Hanks to Will Smith, but the project was put on the backburner when Zero Dark Thirty gained steam.

Our last update on the film came in 2012, when details surfaced that while Smith was interested in starring in the movie, Bigelow was uninterested in casting him. Moreover, Paramount Pictures reportedly balked at the $80 million budget. Bigelow and Boal have now turned their attention to a movie about U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, opening up the director’s chair on Triple Frontier for a curious prospect.

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Image via A24 Films

Per Deadline, A Most Violent Year and All Is Lost filmmaker J.C. Chandor is in early talks to take the helm of Triple Frontier for Paramount. The report notes that Hanks and Smith appear to still be interested in starring in the pic, which has five main roles and, as we saw with the heavy interest in its previous incarnation, they appear to be quite juicy. Charles Roven (The Dark Knight) is producing through his Atlas Entertainment.


Chandor is an interesting and somewhat exciting choice for this particular project. He was most recently attached to direct the oil rig disaster drama Deepwater Horizon, but whereas he was keen on telling a story that directly addressed our country’s contentious relationship with oil, Lionsgate was interested in a more straightforward survival drama. He subsequently left the project, and Peter Berg is now directing.

It’s clear that Chandor wants to tackle big, interesting issues with his films, and while A Most Violent Year was somewhat anticlimactic, it was an admirably ambitious effort with strong performances. Given that Chandor was preparing to direct a more action-focused film with Deepwater (he was in pre-production when he left), he seems more than primed to tackle something on the scale of Triple Frontier for his next feature.