In the wild world of Hollywood movie making, no project is ever truly dead. Pictures might swap directors, add/drop players more than a fantasy football team, change studios or take decades to develop, but an intriguing concept can always be revived. Just look at Term Life. Last month the Vince Vaughn vehicle got terminated at Universal Pictures, but since then a new deal has been struck that's giving the crime thriller a second life. THR reports QED International and Worldview have signed on to produce and finance the picture that is inspired by Andy Lieberman and Nick Thornborrow's graphic novel of the same name. Universal will serve as the picture's domestic distributor. QED will begin selling international rights soon at the American Film Market.
Vaughn, who is also producing the pic alongside Wild West Picture Show Productions' Victoria Vaughn and Micah Mason, will front the film as the soon-to-be late Nick Barrow, a thief who is on many murderers' hit lists. After a heist gone wrong, Barrow knows he has enraged enough mob bosses, hitmen and dirty cops that his days are numbered. So, he sets up a beefy life insurance policy that he hopes will take care of his daughter when he sleeps with the fishes. There's just one catch: it won't take effect for 21 days, meaning for his kid to get the payout Barrow has to stay on his toes and stay alive for this pivotal 3-week window.
Joining Vaughn in this unconventional father's tale is Ender's Game star Hailee Steinfeld, who will play Barrow's estranged daughter with whom he grows closer as the end draws inevitably near. The comic's co-author Lieberman drafted the adapted screenplay, and Vaughn's longtime friend and Couples Retreat director Peter Billingsley will helm Term Life. Production on the newly revived film is expected to take place sometime next year.
Admittedly, Billingsley, who is still best known as the bespectacled, bunny pajamas-wearing protagonist of the holiday favorite A Christmas Story, doesn't have an outstanding reputation as a director. Couples Retreat was his directorial debut, and while it was a hit financially--earning more than $171 million worldwide--that success is more often credited to its star power than its merit. Despite appearances by Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman, Kristen Bell, Peter Serafinowicz, and Jean Reno, critics panned the picture for its lackluster approach to relationship comedy. In his review, our own Josh Tyler called it, "just an excuse for a bunch of Hollywood actors to take an extended vacation in an exotic location on the studio’s dime." But since then Billingsley's been honing his helming on the TBS sitcom Sullivan & Son, so here's hoping Term Life will be a marked improvement.
In the meantime, Vaughn will be hitting theaters in another unconventional dad narrative, Delivery Man which opens on November 22nd.
