This has been a good week for Philip Seymour Hoffman. Not only has he been getting rave reviews for his performance in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, the movie has been setting "per theater average" records and now his latest directorial project has been announced. The Oscar winner is now set to helm Ezekiel Moss, a new project set up over at a Likely Story and Mandalay Pictures in association with Cooper's Town Productions.
Variety says that the script was featured on the 2011 Black List (the annual list of the most popular unproduced screenplays in Hollywood) and written by Keith Bunin. The story is set during the Depression Era and follows a curious and imaginative young boy who starts an unlikely friendship with a drifter in his small town who claims that he has the power to talk with the dead.
The film will be the second movie that Hoffman has directed. Back in 2010 he made his debut with Jack Goes Boating, which was based on a play by Robert Glaudini that he starred in alongside Amy Ryan, John Ortiz, Richard Petrocelli, and Thomas McCarthy. The film received middling reviews from critics and after premiering at Sundance and playing at the Toronto International Film Festival it never got a wider release than 90 theaters.
Said Cathy Schulman of Mandalay Pictures about the signing, "Hoffman is one of the great talents of our generation. We are thrilled to be in his capable hands directing this captivating and gothic exploration of faith and the supernatural."
Hoffman is currently filming The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, in which he plays the character Plutarch Heavensbee.
