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Even before Focus Features made Promised Land a late Oscar entry, the film’s writer-stars Matt Damon and John Krasinski came under fire from the energy industry. Their film deals with “fracking,” which mixes chemicals, sand, water and drilling to loosen underground shale deposits to harvest natural energy. Damon and Fran McDormand play gas company reps using the lure of potential riches to convince struggling farmers to allow fracking on their lands, despite the risks for their crops and livestock. Krasinski plays a grassroots activist fighting the reps as the town prepares to vote. Promised Land reunites Damon with Gus Van Sant, who directed Good Will Hunting, which brought Oscars and fame to Boston neophyte scribes Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Krasinski are fun guys, the type who’d be a blast to invite over to watch football…as long as you aren’t a fan of the New York Giants and the two Super Bowls they won over the New England Patriots.

DEADLINE: Matt, you’ve said recently that the Bourne Legacy spinoff didn’t make it any easier for Jason Bourne to return. What has to happen for us to see your signature character back onscreen?

DAMON: Just a couple things, really. Paul Greengrass has to want to do it, and secondly and equally important, it comes down to Paul and I knowing what the hell we want to do. We just don’t have a story, and we haven’t had one. I quietly went to Jonah Nolan, because he and his brother Chris did such a brilliant job on Batman and that whole mythology. I just said, can you put your brain on this? I can’t figure it out. And he took a run at it and he couldn’t crack it either. Paul and I have been talking about it for years. And we can’t quite see what the movie would be. If we could get line of sight on that…

DEADLINE: We are force-fed so many unnecessary sequels, and here is a smart thriller that we actually want to see more of…

DAMON: Neither of us is against it. I would love to do another one. I love that character. To me, the reason to make that movie is because people want to see it. Paul and I have said that to each other. We don’t take for granted the fact that we’ve built an audience for Bourne, that’s a real privilege. But our part of that bargain is that the movie is good and belongs with the other three. Until we can deliver that, we just can’t make it.

DEADLINE: I watched last week as Brad Pitt’s bankability got questioned after Killing Them Softly tanked. How much do stars like you and Brad worry about taking on projects like that or Promised Land? You see them as specialty pictures made at a price, but if they fail, they go down in the loss column.

DAMON: Some actors don’t make these movies for exactly that reason. I couldn’t bear to have a career like that. These are exactly the kind of movies I like to go see. That might put me in the minority of the movie-going public, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make them. In writing Promised Land, John and I talked a lot about films like Local Hero and The Verdict, a movie I absolutely love. I don’t know what that movie would do today, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to be in The Verdict.

DEADLINE: How helpful then are hits like Bourne?

DAMON: It’s always nice when one hits. It buys you relevance in the industry for a couple years and gives you cover to do these other things. But I would never just protect my beach head. That would be a career built out of fear and I won’t live that way. I want to challenge myself in different genres, playing different characters, and I don’t want to get pigeonholed and forced to do the same things. If Promised Land does not do a lot of business, it’s not going to end my career. But I am mindful like we all are that you don’t get to keep doing this if your movies don’t perform at the box office.

DEADLINE: How much of the ambition behind this script was to expose the dangers of fracking? Is that what you responded to, Matt?

DAMON: Not at all. I responded to the idea of a guy going to a small town and being changed by the town, and the town being changed by him. It was about American identity, where we’ve been and where we are headed. We talked about different issues we could use as a backdrop. As we researched natural gas, we realized it was the obvious choice because the stakes are so incredibly high, and it is right now something people are grappling with in thousands of communities all over the country. It seemed a perfect fit for the story we wanted to tell.

DEADLINE: When you cover a hot-button topic like fracking, how do you make sure you don’t leave viewers feeling they’ve been lectured?

DAMON: We talked about that a lot, and worked toward having characters at the center of this that felt like people we all know. Like that guy who, as soon as he gets five grand, goes right out and buys a Corvette. Or Fran McDormand’s character, who approaches making these deals with locals as a job and makes the decisions she makes to support her kid. Those things are humanizing; the relatable characters keep it from being a dry, boring lecture. I’d never forgive myself for writing that.
And there are people on the other side who argue just as strongly and ask, do you bring your daughters to the whorehouse when times get tough? These are real arguments and real people. We wanted to be sure the screenplay wasn’t judging any of the characters, and that you would recognize some of your own decisions in the decisions these people are making when big money and real people collide in these communities.

DEADLINE: How did the writing dynamic between you and John compare with your Good Will Hunting collaboration with Ben Affleck?

DAMON: It was eerily similar. Maybe because we’re all actors, the process was absolutely the same. We’d improvise stuff, play all the different characters. It brought back a lot of really great memories. I really did forget how much I loved writing. My wife said to me in the middle that even if you guys never get this movie made, I haven’t seen you this happy and at least you’ve remembered how much you love this. It’s true. I’m definitely not going to take as much time between writing jobs again.

DEADLINE: No getting around the fact you wrote a script with another actor. How upset was Ben at this blatant infidelity?

DAMON: Well, listen. I think John just used me, to get to Ben.

KRASINSKI: Not true…but do you have his number?

DAMON: Ben is at the top of the A-list in every single category, so Ben is not hurting at all these days.

DEADLINE: I just read an Entertainment Weekly cover tribute to Ben written by his Argo producer George Clooney. Maybe it’s you who should be worried, Matt. You could feel the bro-mance in the air. It wouldn’t shock me if they are going halves on a private box at Fenway Park.

DAMON: That’s why I immediately took my next job on Clooney’s The Monuments Men. I want to head that off. I gotta put a stop to all this.

DEADLINE: Matt, what got in the way of making Promised Land your directing debut?

DAMON: I blame my damn kids. Actually, I was doing Neill Blomkamp’s movie Elysium. It’s a big sci-fi film that ran longer than expected. I realized I was going to have a two-week break before leaving my family again to go into pre-production for 12 weeks, and then shoot for another eight weeks. I just couldn’t do it. So I bowed out ungracefully at the eleventh hour. John and I wanted this movie for 2012, it was important just because of the topicality. We saw from a distance when we started a year and a half ago that this issue was gaining prominence and we felt people would really start being engaged with it around now.

DEADLINE: Matt, how humbling was it when you had one way in mind to shoot the picture, and then see this?

DAMON: That shot was just exquisite. We knew it was a great shot when we saw him do it and later, we said to each other, we wrote this thing and we didn’t think of that! It was a director elevating the material. I’d like to think that eventually I would have arrived at the conclusion that we needed the girl in the foreground, but I don’t know. He thought of it first. It was humbling.

DEADLINE: Even before anybody saw this film, the energy industry was critical of Promised Land, noting its partial sponsorship from oil-vested Abu Dhabi. How has this impacted your film?

DAMON: Well, the film hasn’t come out yet, I wouldn’t get into an argument about a book I haven’t read, and so I can’t engage with someone knocking a film they haven’t seen. I think that’s more of a fringe element. The energy industry is more sophisticated and my guess is, if they decide to attack the movie they’ll put out stories about people who’ve positively been affected, and have them talk about the movie. They won’t deal with it directly. That would be the more sophisticated play, and what I’d do if I were them.

DEADLINE: Promised Land was the last film to enter the Oscar race. It platforms December 28 before opening in January. Why enter so late?

DAMON: Normally, when we’re in a race, we like to give everybody a big head start. Actually, we badly wanted to get it out this year, and Gus has so much experience that he didn’t need an extended postproduction. I’ve never been good at handicapping this stuff. I just know I’m proud of it and we’ll see what happens. It’s hard to make a dent in the public consciousness with all of the behemoths that are coming out. John and I have considered telling people that we actually have Hobbits, and that at the end, Osama bin Laden gets shot in the face. Unfortunately, neither of those things happened in Promised Land, but it has some other merits, I hope.

DEADLINE: Matt, you outed the retirement plans of Steven Soderbergh and just wrapped his last film, Behind The Candelabra. The three of us could sit here and name 100 directors who should retire before Soderbergh. How much have you tried to talk him out of it?

DAMON: Believe me, it’s an ongoing conversation, but after a few years to absorb this, I am at peace with his decision. He is a real artist, he’s got a lot to give and I just hope he finds something that feels right at this stage of his life. My real hope is he misses us and comes back.

DEADLINE: He has done great work since your declaration made the retirement plans public. Maybe he’ll pull a Brett Favre, the quarterback who kept un-retiring.

DAMON: I want him to pull a Favre so bad, dude. I hope Steven Soderbergh becomes the Brett Favre of moviemaking.

DEADLINE: I’m out of questions, but since we are on a football track and you guys are fans, what say we reminisce about the last two Super Bowls between my Giants and your Patriots?

DAMON: Oh, please don’t. We’re hanging up on you now. Okay. The first one, David Tyree, greatest catch ever. Second one, Mario Manningham, second greatest catch ever. Two miracles. Good for you. But you were one Gronkowski sprained ankle away from an ass whuppin’ last time.

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At the New York premiere of his new film, the activist screenwriter/actor explained the intricate politics that drive the story he co-wrote with John Krasinski.

Even as camera flashes lit up Broadway and taxis shot uptown, Matt Damon’s mind was focused on the small, rural towns that dot the American landscape.

His new film, Promised Land, debuted Tuesday night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, providing a smooth, celebratory push for a project that has already had a stormy path to the big screen, thanks to the politics of environmentalism and corporate influence.

Damon, who co-wrote the Gus Van Sant-directed film with co-star John Krasinski, stars as a hotshot salesman for a natural gas procurement company; his job is to get residents in down-on-their-luck rural towns to sign away the rights to drill deep into the shale deposits located underneath their land. It’s a controversial practice called fracking, which many scientists believe pollutes local water supplies with various chemicals, killing farmland and endangering the citizenry. Damon’s character, Steve Butler, argues that the sometimes-rich contracts are a godsend for the fading heartland, but is frustrated when a small Pennsylvania community decides to vote on whether to allow Global’s drills into its town. He also is surprised when he learns of some inconvenient truths about the process.

The natural gas industry and conservative organizations have already attacked the film as a liberal polemic (Focus Features CEO James Schamus jokingly thanked the Heritage Foundation in his introduction Tuesday), and while the movie does explain the downside to fracking, Damon’s main concern was using the issue as a greater statement about who controls American democracy.

“One thing [natural gas companies] are very worried about is decisions being made at the local level,” Damon told The Hollywood Reporter at the premiere. “They really would rather have decisions being made at the state level. And their argument is that it’s far more efficient for them to understand what the regulations are for an entire state, rather than try to argue town-to-town about how to do things and have different zoning laws.

“Okay, that’s an understandable argument,” he continued, “but the flip side of it for these local communities is like, are we going to let somebody legislate from the other side of the state what can and can’t be done in our actual backyards? So you can see each side there and we’ll see what happens. But this definitely takes the view that we should be in charge of what happens in our communities.”

In that sense, the outcome of the deliberation — which takes twists and unexpected turns — is not the film’s main concern. “The democracy has been hijacked,” Damon explained, and “it’s not about how they vote, it’s about them taking the vote back.”

One of the many big-name New Yorkers in attendance was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the lawyer and environmental activist, and he was far less circumspect on the issue of drilling for natural gas.

“I think that fracking ultimately is going to be a big mistake in our country,” he explained to THR. “It has a promise, which is that it will help make us energy independent, but we have much cheaper ways, more efficient ways, more patriotic ways and more wholesome and safe ways to do that. I think one of the things that the producers of this film wanted to show was the subtle ways that fracking doesn’t just poison water supplies but it poisons human communities, it poisons human relationships. It’s not a good thing for our country.”

One of the movie’s more subtle displays of corporate power comes when Steve and his co-worker Sue (Frances McDormand) shop for flannels and other regional-appropriate clothing at a local store. In order to convince the residents they have their best interests in mind, they must look like them — even if they’re just playing a part.

“Well we talked with landmen who do this, and a lot of them said ‘Look, the car you drive up in matters. You drive up in a foreign car in some of these places and they’re not really going to want to talk to you,’” the star recalled. “I talked to one guy who said he always puts on a John Deere hat before he goes out. It’s just something these guys do; they’re salesmen and they’re trying to make a sale and they want the people to identify with them as much as possible. So they have little tricks that they do.”

Whether or not the film changes any minds, it’s determined to at least open some eyes.

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The new movie “Promised Land,” which Matt Damon co-wrote and co-produced, came in under budget and ahead of schedule because it had a script, the actor and Oscar-winning screenwriter said Tuesday night in New York. The talk was distributed on the Internet through Livestream.

Damon, who discussed the film along with co-star and co-producer John Krasinski of the NBC sitcom “The Office” and director Gus Van Sant, contrasted that to his last Jason Bourne movie, which he said they were writing day to day while they were shooting it. “It took years off our lives. It was so much pressure because you’re so aware of how much money … once you get on set, the money is just burning.”

He added, “(Director) Paul Greengrass and I would say like we’re in the wrong country. … It was 4 in the morning and we’re on a street and I’m going, Is there anything else we can shoot in Spain?”

Damon said watching “The Bourne Legacy,” the fourth movie in the series based on Robert Ludlum’s novels and the only one in\which he did not appear, was “very odd.” “It had a lot of same bells and whistles of the Bourne series but I didn’t know anything about it.”
That movie made it less likely that Damon will appear in another movie about the assassin with amnesia though “I don’t think it makes it impossible,” he said.

Damon said “Promised Land,” which opens in New York on Dec. 28 and nationwide Jan. 4, was made for slightly less than $18 million. It deals with the controversial procedure of capturing natural gas called fracking.

Damon and Frances McDormand play energy company employees who try to buy drilling rights from the residents of a rural town in western Pennsylvania, but their characters are not meant to be villains, the speakers said.

“All the characters should feel like people you know,” said Damon, who noted that Van Sant decided that none of the actors would wear makeup.

Damon had planned to make his directing debut with the movie but backed out about a year ago because of the workload.

“It was rough, but I knew that it was the right thing for the movie and I knew it was the right thing for my life,” he said.

The morning after he told Krasinski that he couldn’t direct “Promised Land,” Damon emailed the script to Van Sant, who agreed to direct it a few hours later, after he read the script. “I told John as the producer, the best thing I did on the movie was fire myself as the director.”

Damon and Van Sant previously worked together on “Good Will Hunting,” for which Damon and actor Ben Affleck won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1997 and on “Gerry,” co-starring Casey Affleck, in 2002.

Novelist and screenwriter Dave Eggers was involved in writing “Promised Land” early in its development and is credited with the story.

Damon said McDormand joined the cast after she read an early draft and writing went fast because with him and Krasinski, they knew three of the actors they were writing for.

Krasinski, who suggested the idea for the movie to Damon, said, “I had always wanted to write a movie about American identity.”

He noted that his father grew up in steel mill town outside Pittsburgh and said he was fascinated by how his father had described life there.

“I just wanted to bring it back to a conversation about people,” he said. “This idea of natural gas was an incredible backdrop. There’s huge potential gain and huge potential loss.”

Damon said they lost funding for the movie when he dropped out as director but later obtained backing from Focus Features and Participant Media. Participant has a deal with Image Nation, the production arm of Abu Dhabi Media, but Damon said he and Krasinski did not know of its involvement until they saw its logo on the rough cut.

Krasinski said he does not care what audiences think about the process of fracking. “Honestly, the only reaction I’ve ever wanted from this movie is to start a conversation. … I think that as a country, we just need to start taking a little more responsibility for where we’re headed together, rather than where we’re headed individually.”

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As we mentioned in our Gotham Awards coverage, this is the week when Focus Features is stepping up their game to get word out on Matt Damon and John Krasinski’s Promised Land, directed by Gus Van Sant. Earlier today, ComingSoon.net was one of a couple dozen journalists invited to a special luncheon at midtown New York’s prestigious Aquavit restaurant, specializing in Swedish cuisine and famous for kicking off the career of superstar chef Marcus Samuelsson. Damon, Krasinski and Van Sant were all on hand to field questions and talk about their movie in between bites.

Our positive review of the movie is still under embargo, but the film has Matt Damon playing the salesman for a natural gas company who comes to a small town along with a co-worker, played by Frances McDormand, with the intention of leasing land from the local farmers where they can extract natural gas. Along comes an activist named Dustin, played by Krasinski, who throws a monkey wrench in their progress at convincing the locals to sign contracts, and that’s where the film gets interesting.

Damon met Krasinski when he was working with his future wife Emily Blunt on The Adjustment Bureau in New York and they began working on the script together two years ago after author Dave Eggers helped Krasinski develop the story but then had to go off and write his own book.

The film was shot earlier this year outside of Pittsburgh in a small town much like the one in the film and during his time at our table, Krasinski talked to us about how his father’s own small town experiences inspired him to write the screenplay and how freaked out he got when his father visited the set and started pointing out places where they spent time in his youth.

Krasinski also told us an amazing story about his early years as an actor in New York and how he was almost ready to give up when he traveled to Los Angeles and two weeks later booked the pilot of “The Office.” The rest as they say is history.

All three mentioned how the films of Frank Capra and Elia Kazan were hugely influential on the writing process and the feel of the film, and they’re trying hard not to focus too much on the political side of the story and how “fracking” for natural gas has become a huge political and environmental issue in recent years.

When Matt Damon came over to our table, we spoke with him about the process of writing Promised Land with Krasinski and how that differed from writing Good Will Hunting with Ben Affleck over 15 years ago while they were both struggling actors. He told us how neither of them had any formal education on how to write a screenplay.

Damon complimented Krasinski on the speed at which his brain worked in terms of trying to figure out the mechanics of the screenplay and we heard some amazing stories from both of them about their co-stars, Frances McDormand and Scoot McNairy.

Krasinski was really impressed by what McDormand brought to her role, seemingly without even trying, although she did tell them at the very beginning of the project that she wouldn’t do any press. It’s a shame since it might be her best performance since the Coens’ Fargo, for which she won her Oscar.

McNairy’s audition so impressed the three of them that they changed one of the characters in order to give him a speech. The speech McNairy gives in the film was originally going to be performed by an older actor whose son went to war in Afghanistan, but after seeing his audition, they changed the role for McNairy. Apparently, McNairy did a reading on camera for Van Sant and after it was over, he started talking about his wife and her own struggles with the subject of the movie. Van Sant started rolling tape again to capture the emotion in McNairy’s story, and the part was changed for him. McNairy is having a bit of a moment, appearing not only in this movie but also Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly, opening this weekend, and Ben Affleck’s Argo.

Krasinski also told us how he was crushed when right before last Christmas, Damon decided not to direct the film himself after they had all the pieces in places to go into production, but having to go right into pre-production in January would have kept Damon away from his family for too long.

Director Gus Van Sant filled in the rest of the story, telling us how he came on board in the project’s hour of need when Matt texted him asking if he would read the script and he sent it right over in PDF form before boarding a plane, and Van Sant decided to do it. Van Sant talked about some of his sound design and production decisions and how his style has changed from ten years ago when he made Elephant.

Since this was a fairly informal luncheon, we also talked about more esoteric New Yorker topics like the new Barclay Center in Brooklyn (thumbs up from Matt!), living on the Upper East Side (Krasinski and a couple other journalists, not us) and such. Even though both actors are from Boston, they both try to spend as much time in the city as possible.

Hopefully we’ll have more formal interviews with actual quotes from the trio sometime leading up to Promised Land’s release in New York and L.A. on December 28 and wide release on January 4, 2013.

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By Michael Douglas

In “Promised Land,” you get a chance to see Matt’s inherent likability. Some actors have that quality, some don’t. And that likability is necessary to play this kind of scam artist and still be as caring as you are for his trip.

His face is an open book from the first frame when he’s washing his face and he’s tormented and nervous about what’s to come. He handles it without pushing. And he ends the picure with a final speech before the town, telling them the entire truth and what’s he’s been involved with. It’s emotional and powerful without being pushed.

In some ways, Matt is like John Wayne, who had that inherent feeling of trust. Which you also get from Matt. There’s a direct truthfulness there that a lot of actors don’t have. They have to get tricky. Matt has this inherent shit detector. He’s a very good listener, but he also has the ability to handle lengthy dialogue, which is becoming a relatively lost art in film.

He produced this picture and wrote it, and from my own experience with doing dual roles, it never gets in the way for him. Matt has enough knowledge as a writer and producer to surround himself with the best people possible. He’s not threatened by talent. He enjoys it.

Promised Land opens on: December 28, 2012, on a limited release and wide release on January 4, 2013.

Here’s the trailer:

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Synopsis:

A salesman for a natural gas company experiences life-changing events after arriving in a small town, where his corporation wants to tap into the available resources.

Movies > Promised Land > Stills

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]]> http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/promised-land/promised-land-stills/feed/ 1 http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/promised-land-trailer/ http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/promised-land-trailer/#comments Sun, 23 Sep 2012 20:00:23 +0000 Annie http://www.mattdamonfan.net/?p=1281

In August, Focus Features surprised many Oscar prognosticators by setting “Promised Land” for release on Dec. 28. The decision could make the new drama a major awards player, if only because of its pedigree: Matt Damon and John Krasinski wrote the screenplay (from a story by Dave Eggers) and Gus Van Sant directs. The first film co-written by Damon and a fellow actor that Van Sant directed was “Good Will Hunting.” (The pair, along with Casey Affleck, also collaborated on “Gerry,” but you can forget about that one for now.)

For those still not convinced of “Promised Land’s” Oscar bona fides, Focus has released a new trailer for the film that manages to both highlight the human drama and timeliness of its story. Damon stars as a natural gas company salesman who tries to convince the denizens of a rural town to sell their farms for the purposes of fracking. Some agree, but not Krasinski, playing a well-meaning farmer, nor Hal Holbrook’s wizened town elder, a role that many are marking for an Oscar nomination.

Whether “Promised Land” makes a big push for Oscar is obviously to be determined, but the film — which combines elements of “Good Will Hunting,” “Michael Clayton” and “Erin Brockovich” — should certainly be an audience favorite, especially if this new trailer is any indication. Watch above, or head over to Apple to check out “Promised Land” in HD.

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]]> http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/promised-land-trailer/feed/ 0 http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/promised-land/promised-land-could-hit-theaters-by-the-end-of-the-year/ http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/promised-land/promised-land-could-hit-theaters-by-the-end-of-the-year/#comments Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:55:36 +0000 Annie http://www.mattdamonfan.net/?p=1276 Matt’s new movie project is “Promised Land” could be hitting theaters this year! Here’s the article from IndieWire:

Could Gus Van Sant and Matt Damon be headed back to the Oscars? That could be the case if word on their latest collaboration, “Promised Land,” bears out.

The folks over at The Film Stage picked up on a recent feature article on the film in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that dropped a handful of interesting nuggets about the upcoming movie, which was co-written by and co-stars John Krasinksi alongside a cast that includes Frances McDormand, Hal Hobrook, Rosemarie Dewitt, Scoot McNairy and Titus Welliver. Perhaps the biggest bit of info is that Krasinski reveals the movie could be in “a small number of theaters” by the end of the year. Van Sant had already put together an assembly cut during filming, and “is editing the movie and will huddle with his fellow producers and others at summer’s end and tweak the movie through the fall.” Putting those small clues together, our guess is that “Promised Land” will have some kind of awards consideration run, before a wider release in 2013. As for a festival appearance in the fall? We reckon it’s a possibility.

As for the film itself, it will find Damon playing Steve Butler, a corporate salesman who arrives in a rural town with his sales partner, Sue Thomason (McDormand). With the town having been hit hard by economic decline in recent years, the two outsiders see the local citizens as likely to accept their company’s offer, for drilling rights to their properties, as much-needed relief. What seems like an easy job for the duo becomes complicated by the objection of a respected schoolteacher (Holbrook) with support from a grassroots campaign led by another man (Krasinski) who counters Steve both personally and professionally. As you might guess from that logline, there is an environmental angle at play, and early on, there was one word around the interwebs that the movie was an “anti-fracking” screed (fracking is essentially the process by which water and chemicals are blasted to separate rock layers to extract gas and oil). But not so, says Krasinski.

“Fracking for us became a backdrop. The original script was about wind power,” he explains adding about the rumors, “The idea of fracking or natural gas was just a very apropos news story that was beginning to grow a year and a half ago. I just chose that as the background and, of course, that has grown into something quite wild in and of itself.”

So what will the film address thematically? “I don’t want to give too much away, but the situation people are in financially is very, very real. And what they’re protecting is a community and a lifestyle that they believe very, very strongly in,” he explains. “So, for some of the characters in the movie, it’s a choice to give up everything that they are and everything that they have come from, in order for a quick paycheck, which I think is in keeping with a lot of the different opportunities that are going on in the country today, whether it’s the derivative market or anything else.”

In short, the film is more about the values of America today and how they’ve shifted from our parents’ generation, something that Krasinski remembers his father recollecting. The “way he described his upbringing and the country and the community that he grew up in, and how everything was incredibly honorable and loyal and incredibly rather simple in the best way — going to work, having family, having friends, and taking care of what you needed to take care of, and there wasn’t really much else. And someone’s word was as valuable as anything else,” he shares.

Sounds like the kind of big, broad ideas that Oscar loves and with Van Sant at the helm, a script from Damon and Kraskinski and a pretty compelling cast, this one is inching up our list of anticipated movies for 2012. Hopefully we’ll know more soon, but this could be a dark horse for the end of the year.

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]]> http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/promised-land/promised-land-could-hit-theaters-by-the-end-of-the-year/feed/ 2 http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/focus-participant-acquire-matt-damonjohn-krasinski-film-promised-land/ http://www.mattdamonfan.net/movie-news/focus-participant-acquire-matt-damonjohn-krasinski-film-promised-land/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:21:18 +0000 Annie http://www.mattdamonfan.net/?p=1258 Looks like the Matt Damon & John Krasinki film now has a title: Promised Land. Matt was initially set to direct it, but due to schedule conflicts, he’ll just star on it. Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) is set to direct it. Here is the article from Deadline:

I’m told that Focus Features and Participant Media won a bidding battle for the untitled film that Gus Van Sant will direct with Matt Damon and John Krasinski starring, from the script those actors co-wrote. Focus and Participant are tying down the details. You’ll recall that Damon planned to make his directing debut on the film, but when his schedule made that impossible, he and producer Chris Moore brought it to their Good Will Hunting director Van Sant, who signed on. The film, which got a first draft from Dave Eggers when its title was Gold Mist, is a Capraesque tale in which Damon and Krasinski play rival corporate executives. Damon plays a sales executive who arrives in a small town only to have his whole life called into question. Moore, Damon and Krasinski will produce and production begins in April.

When Damon was directing, the film had been set up at Warner Bros through the production shingle that Damon has there with Ben Affleck. It’s a $15 million budget, and it seems better placed at Focus and Participant, which are teaming up for the first time.

Krasinski had the idea for a film that had resonance in the current climate of economic hardship caused by corporate greed. Krasinski paid Eggers out of his own pocket to write the first draft, then showed it to Damon and Moore while the latter were making The Adjustment Bureau, which starred Damon and Krasinski’s wife, Emily Blunt. Eggers was unavailable to do more work on the script, so Damon and Kraskinski rewrote it together.

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