Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, longtime friends are returning to helm a new movie after their last collaboration “Air” worked out so well. This time, they will no longer be working together in front of the screen as co-stars, as Affleck is set to direct while Damon will star in a lead role.
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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Set To Return In A Kidnapping Thriller
They say we shouldn’t leave the good parts of a year behind, so we brought forward Affleck and Damon’s collaboration and asked for a repeat this year. However, we won’t be getting an exact repeat as Ben Affleck has no role in front of the cameras this time round.
The crime film “Animals” will be based around a kidnapping, as announced by Netflix on Thursday, Jan. 25.
The streaming network listed the thriller’s producers, which included Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Dani Bernfeld of Artists Equity, the artist-led studio founded by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Gerry Cardinale/RedBird Capital Partners — and Brad Weston and Collin Creighton of MAKEREADY, who developed the project in partnership with FIFTH SEASON.
At the moment, the movie only has Damon as one of its casts, along with a screenplay penned by Connor McIntyre and Billy Ray.
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The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the plot will focus on a politician and his wife who must overcome odds to save their kidnapped son.
Both Boston-natives, Affleck and Damon have had a long and enduring friendship since their earliest days in Hollywood, which, more or less, officially kicked off with their Oscar-winning debut “Good Will Hunting” (1997). In recent times, they’ve reunited in 2021’s “The Last Duel,” which they co-wrote and starred in, and 2023’s “Air.”
Following the success of “Good Will Hunting,” which earned them both their first Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay, the pair actually went their separate ways for a while, but the urge to work together due to their friendship and onscreen chemistry kept drawing them back together.
“For a while, we thought maybe we should chill and just do other stuff, and not be Matt and Ben, Matt and Ben,” Affleck told Boston Magazine in a 2013 interview. “We have our company together, we’re developing together. And Matt lives down the street from me like he used to. His kids are living with him, the way we used to live with our folks. The only difference is that we have pools.”
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