‘The Bookie & The Bruiser’ By S. Craig Zahler.
‘Bone Tomahawk’ director S. Craig Zahler has set his next film after 6 years, titled “The Bookie and the Bruiser”, a period crime thriller staring Oscar winner Adrien Brody and Zahler’s frequent collaborator Vince Vaughn. The film is based on an original idea from Zahler and will be written by him. C2 Motion Picture Group is fully financing the project.
Joining Adrien Brody (The Pianist) and Vince Vaughn (Anchorman) is comedy veteran Fred Melamed (Hail, Caesar) (The Dictator). more cast is yet to be announced. This will be the third feature for Vince Vaughn with director Zahler after 2017’s “Brawl in Cell Block 99” and 2018’s “Across Concrete”.
Synopsis: Set in 1959 New York, The Bookie and the Bruiser” follows a pensive, Jewish fellow named Rivner and an oversized Italian-American tough guy named Boscolo from the Lower East Side, both of whom served overseas during WWII and returned changed men who no longer fit inside the lives they’d left behind. Uninterested in taking orders from bosses or playing by the rules of polite society, the two friends partner up as a bookmaker and an enforcer and create an illicit gambling operation that proves to be very profitable, though risky, and their situation gets rather sticky when they find themselves stuck between a powerful Irish gang and the Italian Mafia.
It was reported in April, that S. Craig Zahler had two potential features lined up, one was of his long-in-the-works script for “The Big Stone Grid”, which Michael Mann was once attached to. The other was an original project he was hoping to get financed. It looks like the latter one was moved ahead.
The film is in pre-production and shooting on it will begin on 30th September, in Los Angeles. Anton Corp introduced the film to international distributors at this year’s Cannes market. UTA Independent Film Group and Range Media Partners arranged the financing and represented the North American distribution rights. C2 is the financier for the project.
“We are thrilled to be working with the visionary S. Craig Zahler on this action-packed tale of a searing conflict between the Irish-American and Italian Mafias in New York and see Vince and Adrien team up in this very unique power charged film” said Anton CEO Sebastian Raybaud.
“I’m honored and humbled to be working with one of my favorite filmmakers,” added Caplan (producer). “A Craig Zahler gangster movie is something I’m dying to watch.”
Zahler has a promising track record with his past releases — “Bone Tomahawk”, “Brawl in Cell Block 99” and “Dragged Across Concrete”, all of which have been applauded for their unique storylines and powerful performances. Zahler’s very much what one might qualify as a methodical filmmaker, depicting the madness of morally tortured men. His dialogue packs a satisfying snap and the action almost always plays out in unbearably excruciating fashion
The thought of a new Zahler movie coming out in 2025 is great news, as the filmmaker is one of the more interesting cinematic voices to have emerged the last decade.
Adrien Brody will be next seen in Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist”, a 3.5 hour historical epic tackling a Jewish immigrant’s rise as a brilliant architect in post WWII America. The film was one of the most acclaimed of this year’s fall fests and even won the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice. A24 acquired the film for $10 million, beating out Sony Pictures Classics and Searchlight to nab one of the Oscar contenders for this year.
