According to Deadline, director James Gray is all set to helm a new Boston-set crime drama titled White Devil. Set up at Warner Bros., the project has been made a priority and will be based “loosely” on the life of John Willis aka White Devil Jon.
For those who don’t know, John Willis was a white kid who was adopted into a Chinese family and found himself involved with Boston’s Asian crime gangs. He was actually arrested earlier this year for money laundering, drugs and a couple other charges.
Apparently, the film is going to be “big scale” and is set to get rolling very shortly. That being said, there is no script written yet and we haven’t heard anything on the casting front either, so Warner Bros. will really need to get moving if they want to put this one out in the near future.
Gray, for those who don’t know, is a fantastic director who while not exactly a household name, has done some excellent work over the course of his career. His most recent film, The Immigrant (with Jeremy Renner and Marion Cotillard), premiered earlier this year at Cannes and in the past he’s given us some great movies like We Own The Night and The Yards. He also has two projects with Brad Pitt coming up (The Lost City of Z and The Gray Man).
Personally, I like Gray and it will be interesting to see what he can do with a bigger budget and with a film of this nature. Warner Bros. sure seem excited about it and given what’s been revealed thus far, I think that we should be too.
Tell us, what do you think of White Devil? Does it sounds like a good project for James Gray? Let us know in the comments section below.
