'Stillwater' Will Team Matt Damon With 'The Cobbler' Director Tom McCarthy
Tom McCarthy, director of the Adam Sandler magic shoes movie The Cobbler (and also Spotlight) has found his next project. Sadly, it's not a sequel to The Cobbler. Instead, it's a film called Stillwater, and it stars Matt Damon as a guy who finds magic shoes. Oh, I'm sorry, that's the plot to The Cobbler again. My mistake. Instead, Damon will play an oil worker who goes to France to visit his estranged daughter. The catch: the daughter is in prison for a murder she claims she didn't commit. Sounds like she could use some magic shoes.Variety broke the news about Stillwater, the new Matt Damon movie from director Tom McCarthy. Here's how they're describing it:
"Stillwater" follows an American oil-rig rough neck from Oklahoma, played by Damon, who travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter. In the process, he develops a friendship with a local woman and her young daughter and embarks on a personal journey of discovery and a larger sense of belonging in the world.
That is one wild synopsis. The "daughter in jail for murder" plot sounds completely removed from the "friendship with a local woman" storyline, and I'm curious to see how this all fits together. All jokes about The Cobbler aside, McCarthy is a talented director, and I'm a huge fan of Spotlight. Damon actually came very close to starring in Spotlight, but scheduling got in the way. Now they'll get to work together after all. McCarthy wrote the Stillwater script with Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré. Participant Media is producing.
"The opportunity to reunite with Tom after Spotlight and to partner with our friend and colleague Jonathan King for the first time in his new role makes Stillwater a very special film for everyone at Participant," said Participant CEO David Linde. "This is a wonderful script, centered on universal themes of connection and the search for truth, and we couldn't be more excited to bring it to audiences around the world."
"Tom, Thomas and Noé have written a complex, surprising and emotional story, and Tom is crafting a film that asks us to consider how we engage with each other in an increasingly connected but also fragmented world," added producers Liza Chasin and Jonathan King.