Al Pacino will star in Dan Fogelman's directorial debut!

From The Film Stage:

It’s a good time to be Dan Fogelman. After finding success on the family film circuit with Tangled and Bolt, the screenwriter got paid $2.5 million by Warner Bros. for Crazy, Stupid, Love. (which recently got the praise from EW of the best recent romantic comedy ever made). He then got a 7-figure paycheck for a pitch with Tom Cruise attached. He also scripted My Mother’s Curse, a comedy starring Seth Rogen and Barbara Streisand, shooting this year. Then there is Imagine, his upcoming directorial debut, in which he was paid $3 million by WB for this script. Steve Carell was once attached, but has dropped due to his busy schedule. 24 Frames now reports who may be stepping in.

Quite possibly the greatest actor in cinema, Al Pacino, has been offered the role of the “aging rocker who tries to lead a better life after receiving a lost letter that had been sent to him by his idol John Lennon more than 40 years ago.” After a rough last few years with 88 Minutes, Righteous Kill, and equally horrendous The Son of No One, Pacino has shown promise in such projects as You Don’t Know Jack….and that’s about it. He has also signed on for Barry Levinson‘s Gotti: Three Generations with Joe Pesci and John Travolta. If he agrees to Imagine, it will be fantastic to see him in a promising feature film, which has unfortunately become a rarity for the actor.

As for Fogelman’s work, you can check it out when Crazy, Stupid, Love. hits theaters July 29th.

-Joey's Two Cents: I'm very interested to see what Fogelman has in store for us...thoughts?

Tom Cruise to play a politician again?

Perhaps, according to Collider:

Warner Bros. beat out Fox, Paramount, MGM, and other studios to win a bidding war for an untitled pitch by screenwriter Dan Fogelman (Tangled). Tom Cruise is attached to star as a politician who is caught having an affair: “With his reputation in tatters, the politician retreats to his hometown to lick his wounds, repair relationships and confront his past.” The deal pays $2 million upfront, with $3 million promised if the movie gets made. This is the latest in a series of impressive spec script paydays for Fogelman. WB paid $2.5 million for his Crazy, Stupid, Love screenplay which led to a summer comedy starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Emma Stone. Fogelman will reunite with Carell for his directorial debut, Imagine — that script netted the writer $3 million. In addition to a story credit on Cars 2, Fogelman set up My Mother’s Curse at Paramount. So basically, start preparing for the imminent Fogelmanization of your local theater in the next couple years. More on the story after the jump.

The movie is about a man who has never made a mistake in his life and becomes a politician. His first mistake — an affair — causes his perfectly constructed life to fall apart and he returns home to rebuild.

I’m not sure how literally to treat “never made a mistake” — is this hardcore allegory? Anyway, there are obvious parallels between the virtuous public figure with a sudden image problem and the recent tribulations of Tom Cruise.

Up next for Cruise is Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, scheduled for release December 16. After that, he’ll film the adaptation of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages. Cruise was recently linked to Horizons, slated to begin shooting in October. Fogleman still needs to write the script, which should provide Cruise the opportunity to line this film up after Horizons.

-Joey's Two Cents: As one of the few people who loved Cruise in Lions for Lambs, this is exciting to me...thoughts?