Robert Redford helped create the Sundance Film Festival in in 1978, and this past January director David Lowery wowed the audiences of Park City, Utah with his feature Ain't Them Bodies Saints. So it totally makes sense that the two filmmakers would want to team up on a project together - and today they have apparently forged a deal.
The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Lowery is now set to both adapt and direct The Old Man and the Gun, a film based on a 2003 New Yorker article, with Redford attached to both star and produce. The article, written by David Grann, tells the story of a man named Forrest Tucker, a bank robber who spent almost his entire life either in prison or breaking out of it (including escapes from both Alcatraz and San Quentin). At the age of 78, while living in a retirement community with his wife, he once again tried to stick up a bank, only to once again get caught.
The trade notes that the movie will focus on one particular part of his life, but it's unspecified which part (if Redford's age is any indication, however, it will be fairly late in the game). The project has actually been making its way around Hollywood for some time now and at one point had Wolfgang Petersen attached to helm.
Redford's next film, The Company You Keep - which he also directed - was put into limited release last weekend, and it was recently announced that he will star alongside Chris Evans and Samuel L. Jackson in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Lowery, meanwhile, was recently hired to direct a remake of the kid's movie Pete's Dragon.
