Splash

Edward Norton is exiting “State of Play,” and talks are under way for Ben Affleck to replace him in the Kevin Macdonald-directed drama for Universal Pictures and Working Title.”State of Play” is expected to begin production in the first week of January.

Norton becomes the second high profile cast member to disembark, following the exit of his “Fight Club” co-star Brad Pitt just before Thanksgiving.

While Universal threatened legal action with Pitt, Norton’s exit has no rancor. His problem: he had committed to follow “State of Play” by playing the dual leads in “Leaves of Grass,” an independent comedy written and to be directed by Tim Blake Nelson. Norton is producing that picture with his Class 5 Films partner Bill Migliore, and Nelson. Barbarian Films is financing.

Pitt’s exit, and the courtship of Russell Crowe to replace him, moved the “State of Play” start date from mid-November into January. That created a clash, and the studio, working with Norton’s and Affleck’s reps at Endeavor, worked out an exit plan.

Now it will be Affleck who plays a fast-rising politician who is caught up in a murder conspiracy. Crowe will play a journalist who leads a newspaper’s investigation into the killing. He’s conflicted in that he once ran the pol’s campaigns, and he is now romancing his estranged wife.

Still in the cast are Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright Penn and Jason Bateman. Andrew Hauptman and Working Title partners Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are producing. While Mirren had a stop date so that she could star with Joe Pesci in the Taylor Hackford-directed “Love Ranch,” attempts are being made to work out the dates.

Affleck’s most recent credits include a starring role in last year’s “Hollywoodland” and his directorial debut, “Gone Baby Gone.”

SOURCE

Hollywood actor Ben Affleck has demanded an apology from U.S. magazine Details for misquoting him in an article. The piece quoted Affleck as saying, “I’ve gone out and directed a movie and made it really f-ing good,” referring to his new movie, Gone Baby Gone.

It also implied Affleck may leave L.A. if the movie does not achieve critical acclaim.

Editor-in-chief Dan Peres now admits, “Affleck never made such a statement.”

Source

They’re too cute…

To shelter daughter Violet from developing a sense of entitlement, her celebrated parents Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are looking at schools in Los Angeles and New York – and in Georgia, where the family has a country home.

Of course, they do have some time:  Violet is almost 2.

Still, her proud papa, 35, considers his little girl “the best thing that ever happened to me,” he tells Parade magazine for its Oct. 14 issue.

“She is happy as hell and talks like crazy!” says Affleck. “She has the ability to make me smile and feel so good and be so charmed that, when I’m not with her for a while, all I want to do is go home, just to be around her again.”

It wasn’t always that Affleck found contentment in his personal life, he also tells Parade in comments that appear on the magazine’s web site.

“I grew up in a home environment where I wasn’t getting esteem for anything I did,” he admits. “I played sports, but I wasn’t great at them. … There was alcoholism at home because of my father. I changed schools [at 8 years old], and I didn’t really know the kids at the new school. I felt alone.”

An Early Loner

The isolation only grew worse when he went to the University of Vermont, which he says he chose because he had a girlfriend (who wasn’t interested in him to begin with) going to a school nearby.

“Two weeks after I got there, I called her room, and some guy answered the phone!” he recalls.

“Then, when I was playing an intramural basketball game, I fractured my hip. I was miserable,” he says. “I was now on crutches in the coldest university in America, living in the dorm farthest from the main campus, and I didn’t know a soul, nobody!”

After eating by himself in the cafeteria and skipping Spanish class for five weeks, Affleck got hold of his childhood buddy, Matt Damon, who was at Harvard.

“I called Matt,” remembers Affleck, who told his pal, “You’ve got to pick me up! I can’t walk that well. Come and get me now!”

Sure enough, says Affleck, “Matt was there in six hours. That was the last I ever saw of the University of Vermont. I never went back. I don’t think I have any credits. It was not money well spent.”

Must be nice being famous and rich now though!

Ben Affleck has come a long way in the nearly 10 years since he and Matt Damon won an Academy Award with their mothers by their sides. He’s had more flops than blockbusters, a high-profile romance with Jennifer Lopez, and a daughter Violet, nearly 2, with his wife, actress Jennifer Garner. Now Affleck is staking his entire career on his new film Gone Baby Gone, a career that he now admits was sidelined by bad script choices and his dalliance with Lopez.

In a revealing new interview in the November issue of Details magazine, the 35-year-old actor discusses his directorial debut, leaving Los Angeles, and how his life has evolved since Good Will Hunting came out in 1997. One thing that hasn’t changed? The mama’s boy’s polite, downhome nature. Ever the gentleman, Affleck showed up to the interview despite a wicked cough and even had a good excuse for showing up late — his German Shepherd got into a container of Metamucil and sprayed diarrhea all over the house. “There’s no way Jennifer [Garner] was going to clean that up by herself,” he joked.

On dating Jennifer Lopez:
“It was probably bad for my career. What happens is this sort of bleed-over from the tabloids across your movie work. You go to a movie, you only go once. But the tabloids and Internet are everywhere. You can really subsume the public image of somebody. I ended up in an unfortunate crosshair position where I was in a relationship and [the media] mostly lied and inflated a bunch of salacious stuff for the sake of selling magazines. And I paid a certain price for that. Then, in concert with some movies that didn’t work…”

On Gone Baby Gone:
“I feel like (Gone Baby Gone) is the linchpin for my life. My career. I have a lot riding on it. I want [the film] to work. Badly. I mean, a shitty movie comes out on 2,800 screens? I’ve been there and it’s embarrassing.”

On why he likes directing:
“That’s why there’s something really great about directing-about having authorship over something. If you don’t like this movie, I’m the guy to see. I’m the guy to criticize. I take some measure of comfort in that. It’s fair, at least.”

On his directorial debut:
“Listen, I’ve gone out and directed a movie and made it really f—king good. If the movie’s good, people will like it and go see it. All the rest of it is bullshit.”

On what’s at stake with his new film:
“It’s pretty simple. If people don’t go see it – I’m f—ked.”

On his decision to direct:
“I guess I just thought, I’ve seen it done enough. I’ve been on the sets enough. I’m a writer. An amateur photographer. An actor. I guess I just thought the sum of these parts would come together and I’d be able to do it.”

On living in L.A.:
“I’d be surprised if I’m still living here in a couple of years. Professionally it would be difficult. But that’s not as important as that other thing.”

I don’t know about you guys, but I like Ben Affleck. He seems down to earth to me. I could be wrong of course, but he just seems that way. He seems like the kind of guy that you might have gone to high school with. I think him and Jennifer are such a cute married couple and I hope they last! Plus, he’s not hard on the eyes!