As much as Craig Gillespie has proven to be a solid director, he's probably best recognized for things that either flopped or didn't happen at all. Audiences flat out ignored his underrated Fright Night remake last year, and recently he dropped out of the troubled adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But things are looking up, with his signing to direct Will Ferrell in The Flamingo Thief, and now he'll work with Jon Hamm on the promising sports drama Million Dollar Arm.
When I spoke to writer Tom McCarthy(Win Win) about a year ago, he was still mulling the idea of directing the true life story himself, but it looks like that won't be happening. Instead it's Gillespie who is in talks for the job, with Hamm starring as agent J.B. Bernstein, who discovered Major League pitchers Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel through an Indian reality show. Bernstein chose them out of a group of 40,000 contestants, and then was faced with acclimating them to American culture.
It's a great story, and perfect for McCarthy's sensibilities. It should also work well for Gillespie, who is really good at standing back and letting his actors do their thing, and obviously the more of Hamm the better. [Variety]
