Universal Pictures is hitting up the online newsstands for inspiration, as the studio is currently brokering a deal to secure the rights for Josh Dean’s article The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang, with Miles Teller in the crosshairs to star. Ruben Fleischer (Gangster Squad, Zombieland) is set to direct and Scott Stuber (Ted 2, The Free State Of Jones) will produce alongside Teller.
The Whiplash actor is expected to tackle one of the lead roles, in a story about a group of Canadian criminals who successfully committed a number of bank robberies in the 1980s. The twist in the tale? None of the four masterminds ever fired a weapon, which is a remarkable feat since they are credited with shaking down approximately 100 U.S. financial institutions for around $10 million.
The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang originally appeared in The Atavist, an online magazine hub that publishes one non-fiction story per month. Dean’s story was crafted after undertaking months of research alongside one of the bank robbers responsible.
You can check out the full story overview below and let us know who you think should be joining Teller in the cast in the comments section.
They were in and out in less than two minutes—that’s how they got away with millions. And for the duration of their reign, no bank robbers were more feared (though they never fired their guns) nor more pursued or more mythologized than the Stopwatch Gang. The members themselves were straight out of central casting: Lionel Wright, a meticulous introvert who could disappear in a room full of people; Paddy Mitchell, a charming and well-connected crook who saw an angle in everything and would go to any lengths to avoid the hell of being locked away; and Stephen Reid, a fearless point man who could find the weakness in any system and whose story—of addiction and descent into crime, of redemption and literary fame—was all prelude to a tragic but life-saving fall from grace.
In The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang, Josh Dean reconstructs the Gang’s glory days and reveals how the real story, pieced together through months of research and reporting most prominently with Reid himself, as he comes to the end, at age 64, of his final days in the custody of the state—is more remarkable than the myth that has long been told.
