Gossip Girl‘s Katie Cassidy has been tapped to join the cast of writer-producer Charles Matthau‘s Elmore Leonard adaptation Freaky Deaky. [Variety]
Cassidy will play ex-hippie Robin Abbott, just released from prison after blowing up a police car. After launching a new career writing historical romance novels, she hooks up with her ex-boyfriend, to be played by Brendan Fraser. The two of them hatch a plot to con an alcoholic movie mogul out of millions of dollars. Their scheme will likely be repeatedly thwarted by Matt Dillon, who will play an LAPD bomb squad officer who gets wise to the couple’s plans.
An older IMDB page for the project lists Sienna Miller in the Cassidy role and Matthau as the project’s director, as well as his producing and writing duties. Given Cassidy’s casting and the recent news that William H. Macy has sadly left the project, the real helmer of this project may not have been finalized.
I’m not familiar with the novel, but the world can always use more Elmore Leonard – even the worst of his adaptations (The Big Bounce) has some flash of fun (Owen Wilson thwacking a construction foreman in the head with a baseball bat comes to mind) and at their best (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Jackie Brown), the films of his books are nothing short of terrific entertainment.
The HarperCollins synopsis for the book sounds like the story centers around Dillon’s bomb squad cop, but given the ensemble nature of this kind of project, expect Cassidy’s role to be central. She was impressive in Taken and had her midsection torn open in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, so let’s see how she does in Leonard’s society-skewering universe.
Are you a fan of Elmore Leonard, or are you a Gossip Girls fan thinking “Elmore who?”