Oscar winner Ben Affleck (Argo, Justice League, Gone Girl) has joined The Last Thing He Wanted adaptation from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Dee Rees (Mudbound) for Netflix,according to The Hollywood Reporter. Affleck will join the already announced Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables, Ocean’s 8) in the cast.
Also joining the cast are Toby Jones (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), Rosie Perez (Rise), and Edi Gathegi (StartUp). The film will be Affleck’s second collaboration with Netflix, who is starring alongside Charlie Hunnam and Oscar Isaac in Triple Frontier, the action-adventure directed by J.C. Chandor and releasing in 2019.
The Last Thing He Wanted centers on a hardscrabble journalist named Elena McMahon (Hathaway) who inherits her father’s position as a dealmaker — an arms dealmaker. She soon finds herself on dangerous ground as the Iran-Contra Affair’s arms-for-drugs plot reaches its tipping point.
The film is based on the novel by the same name from author Joan Didion, who is better known for her award-winning autobiographical work including The Year of Magical Thinking and The White Album.
The Last Thing He Wanted is currently filming in Puerto Rico and will be directed by Rees from the script co-written by her alongside Marco Villalobos. Rees will also produce along with Cassian Elwes. Jamin O’Brien, Wayne Godfrey, Robert Jones, Mark Lane, and James Harris are executive producing. The movie is expected to debut in 2019.
