George Clooney is in talks to play the lead role in Fox Searchlight’s The Descendants. The movie, with director by Alexander Payne at the helm, will use an adapted script by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.
The Descendants, a family ‘dramedy’ is about a wealthy landowner. Matt King, a wealthy Honolulu attorney, takes his two adolescent daughters and goes on a search for his wife’s lover, all in the hope of keeping his family together. In the movie, King’s wife is in a coma, and he finds out that his wife had an affair just before the accident left her in a coma. The movie is based on Kaui Hart Hemmings’ 2007 novel bearing the same name.
This project is Payne’s first collaboration with Clooney. It is also Payne’s first feature in half a decade and is the follow-up to 2004’s Sideways. The movie is produced by Fox Searchlight.
The production for the movie is set to start in February 2010 in Hawaii. Payne directed Election in 1999 and is an executive producer for HBO’s TV series, Hung. Matt King, the character Clooney will play if he takes on the role is not like any other character he has previously played. King is a slightly quirky man who tries to argue with his 10-year old daughter who wears obscene t-shirts and bullies her classmates, while his 17-year old daughter is fighting a drug addiction.
The entire family, which we would call an absurdity, will prove to be a challenging role for Clooney. Clooney has three movies in the pipeline: Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Men Who Stare at Goats and Up in the Air.