The eagle eyes at Coming Soon noticed a St. Patrick’s Day scoop just waiting to be found on Twitter.
Budding screenwriter Kyle Ward revealed on his Twitter account (@Kyle_Ward) that Jamie Foxx will play James Lynch in Millennium Films/Lionsgate’s adaptation of the Eidos Entertainment video game "Kane & Lynch: Dead Men," which veteran stunt coordinator Simon Crane will direct from Ward’s script. The tweet has since been deleted.
Shedding further light on the project, Deadline New York reports that Foxx’s Lynch is a schizophrenic psychopath who teams up with framed mercenary Adam ‘Kane’ Marcus (Bruce Willis) to recover a doomsday device within 72 hours while also trying to rescue Kane’s wife and daughter, who have been kidnapped by his former compadres.
Sounds to me like a "Mission: Impossible" movie with two Ethan Hunts and more videogame violence.
Adrian Askarieh and Daniel Alter are producing the film with David Willis. Production is set to begin in August.
In addition to "Kane & Lynch," Ward is writing Fox’s "Hitman 2" and Sony’s "Drake’s Fortune," based on the Playstation 3 game "Uncharted." Ward has become the industry’s go-to-guy for video game adaptations, but he also wrote the original, awesome script for the stylish, "Sin City"-esque thriller "Fiasco Heights" that Platinum Dunes has refused to do anything with since they purchased it several years ago.
In the game, the Lynch character is an older white male, but I’m pleased to see that the studio didn’t care about race and just focused on landing a high-caliber actor.
Like every entertainer, Foxx has had his ups and downs. For every Oscar-winning performance ("Ray") or Oscar-nominated performance ("Collateral"), there have two bad ideas ("Miami Vice," "Valentine’s Day") and two really bad ideas ("Stealth," "Law Abiding Citizen"). That said, I actually thought Foxx was unjustly ignored for his performance in "The Soloist," and was much more deserving of an Oscar nomination than "Invictus" star Matt Damon.
Foxx next appears in "Due Date," Todd Phillips’ follow-up to "The Hangover" that stars Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis. The WB road trip comedy is due in theaters November 5.
