EXCLUSIVE: George Gallo has signed on to direct the thriller Covet as his next feature film after he completes The Poison Rose. The latter pic stars John Travolta and Morgan Freeman and is gearing up to start shooting this month in Georgia.
The filmmaker, noted for his screenwriting credits on Bad Boys 1 & 2 and Midnight Run as well as directing such titles as Middle Men, will reunite with Emmy-nominated producer Steve Lee Jones and Scott LaStaiti. Previously, they worked on the fitness guru Weider brothers feature Bigger, which is being sold at Cannes by 13 Films.
Written by Washington, D.C. attorney George Mahaffey, who sold his first script to Paramount, Covet tells the intense tale of a home invasion of a wealthy Persian-Jewish family by ruthless anti-Immigrant Nationalist perpetrators that goes horribly awry.
Jones says: Covet cuts deep into the zeitgeist of the current notion of anti-immigration being masqueraded as patriotism. It champions a unique hero who takes on pure evil with a vengeance and delivers an intensity that is hard to find in such elevated genre material.”
Covet is being produced through Jones’ production company Bee Holder Productions, along with Eric Fischer via his Triangle Productions banner which is the newly formed production division of financier Three Point Capital. David Gendron and Ali Jazayeri of Three Point will serve as executive producers. Bee Holder’s EVP Camila Castro will also serve as EP.
Jones received an Emmy nomination for HBO’s Al Pacino Jack Kevorkian film You Don’t Know Jack. His upcoming projects include the biopic Kimbo about the life of famed MMA fighter Kimbo Slice and the political thriller Forty-Six.
Gallo helmed Bigger and co-wrote the film with fellow Middle Men scribe Andy Weiss (White Boy Rick) and Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer) and Ellen Brown Furman (The Infiltrator). Pic stars Julianne Hough, Tyler Hoechlin, Tom Arnold, DJ Qualls, Robert Forster and Victoria Justice.
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