James Gray, the director of “Ad Astra,” has revealed his next film, an original screenplay and crime drama called “Paper Tiger.”
Gray’s latest film, his ninth feature, will star Adam Driver and will reunite him with his stars from 2022’s “Armageddon Time,” Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway.
“Paper Tiger” is described as a tense and gritty story about two brothers pursuing the American Dream, only to become entangled in a scheme that turns out to be too good to be true. As they try to navigate their way through an ever-more dangerous world of corruption and violence, they find themselves and their family brutally terrorized by the Russian “Mafiya.”
The film is being launched to buyers at next week’s AFM, with CAA Media Finance handling U.S. rights and Vincent Maraval and Kim Fox’s The Veterans handling international sales. The worldwide rights to the film are available.
Principal photography will begin on “Paper Tiger” in early 2025.
Leone Film Group is fully financing the film, with Raffaella Leone producing alongside Rodrigo Teixeira under his RT Features banner.
Driver was most recently seen in “Megalopolis” and recently completed production on Jim Jarmusch’s next film “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother.” He’s also acting on stage at the Lortel Theater in an Off-Broadway production called “Hold On to Me Darling.”
Strong can be seen in “The Apprentice” as Roy Cohn alongside Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump. He’s currently in production on Scott Cooper’s “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” the Bruce Springsteen biopic starring Jeremy Allen White.
Hathaway starred in this year’s “The Idea of You” and is in post on David Lowery’s next film for A24, “Mother Mary,” as well as David Robert Mitchell’s “Flowervale Street” for Warner Bros. She’s also set to reprise her role in “The Princess Diaries 3” alongside Julie Andrews for Disney.
Gray’s feature debut was Little Odessa in 1994. He has since made seven other features including, “We Own the Night,” “Two Lovers,” and “The Lost City of Z.” Five of his films have competed for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Gray is represented by CAA and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner Auerbach Hynick Jaime LeVine Sample & Klein. Driver is repped by MWE and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern. Strong by WME, Suger23, and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush, Kaller, Gellman, Meigs & Fox. Hathaway is represented by CAA, Entertainment 360 and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.
Deadline first reported the news.
