Andrew Garfield will star as real-life Afghanistan War reporter Carlos Mavroleon in the indie “Black Lion” for Stay Gold Pictures, the company announced Tuesday.
Garfield will also produce the film with Rupert Fowler and Daniela Taplin Lundberg, with Nicholas Mavroleon, Aidan Hartley, and Alessandro Camon as executive producers. The project is based off a pitch by Camon, who received an Oscar nomination in 2010 for co-writing the screenplay for “The Messenger.”
Mavroleon was the Harvard-educated heir to an English/Greek shipping empire who decided to leave Wall Street behind and take on the most dangerous assignments in journalism.
“Black Lion” will retell the story of his final assignment for “60 Minutes,” in which he was tasked to sneak into tribal zones in Afghanistan shortly after U.S. air strikes in 1998. He discovered the Pakistani link between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and was shortly thereafter discovered dead in a motel room in Pakistan.
Stay Gold Features made waves at Sundance earlier this year when its first feature, “Patti Cake$,” triggered an intense bidding war that was won by Fox Searchlight with a $9.5 million sale.
CAA packaged this deal and will represent its domestic distribution rights. Garfield, who is hot off his Oscar nomination for his lead performance in “Hacksaw Ridge,” will appear later this year in the A24 neo-noir film “Under the Silver Lake,” which is also produced and co-financed by Stay Gold.
Garfield is repped by CAA, Gordon & French and lawyer, David Weber. Camon is repped by CAA and lawyer, Robert Getman.