Shia LaBeouf & Mel Gibson Set For Satire ‘Rothchild’ From ‘Stan & Ollie’ Director Jon S. Baird; HanWay Launches Sales — Cannes

EXCLUSIVE: The starry Cannes market packages keep coming. Shia LaBeouf and Mel Gibson have been set to star in dark satire Rothchild about New York’s super rich.

Stan & Ollie director Jon S. Baird is on board to direct the feature, which HanWay will launch this week on the Riviera. CAA Media Finance is handling North American rights.

The project, whose title puns on the wealthy Rothschild group, charts how charismatic outcast Becket Rothchild (LaBeouf) plots his way back into his family’s riches, setting himself on a collision course with patriarch Whitelaw Rothchild (Gibson). On the way, he must infiltrate the weird and twisted lives of his super-rich kin including frat boys, hipster artists and reality TV stars.

The project was a 2014 Blacklist script by John Patton Ford and is being produced by Los Angeles-based production company Unified Pictures. Keith Kjarval (Dragged Across Concrete) and Tyler Jackson (What They Had) will produce alongside Black Box Management principals Lowell Shapiro and Mike Dill who represent the writer. Pic is due to go into production September, 2019 in New York.

Kjarval commented, “Rothchild is a satirical and thrilling ride, and I am elated to be working with a filmmaker like Jon Baird, who not only has an incredible track record of guiding award-winning performances, but is crafting this film to be an action packed cautionary tale on wealth and power.”

HanWay Films MD Gabrielle Stewart noted, “Baird has proved to be brilliant at edgy dark comedy bringing Irvine Welsh’s Filth to life, then showed his mainstream chops with the beloved Stan And Ollie. Here he has a chance to combine all his skills and bring to life a real twist on the classic rags to riches story. The divide between the super rich and the rest of the world is an ever growing one, and it’s both fun and fascinating to delve into its inner bowels along with our hero trying to scramble to the top and claim his piece.”

This is shaping up to be ‘Mel’s market’ with host of Gibson projects on sale.

LaBeouf is represented by CAA, John Crosby Management, and attorney Matt Saver; and Gibson by CAA. Baird is represented by CAA, Independent Talent Group, and Morris Yorn.

View this article at Deadline.