Forest Whitaker & Tim Story are PATRIOTS

The first movie to benefit from the Weinsteins Interim agreement with the WGA is PATRIOTS, a pickup by the studio from a script by Robert Eisele (THE GREAT DEBATERS) with Forest Whitaker to lead and Tim Story to direct. Tim Story being that hack director of the two FANTASTIC FOUR movies, who before that gave us the hideous TAXI and BARBERSHOP.

The movie revovles around the real life figure of Al Collins, a basketball coach for a school in L.A., who led his Patriots team to the state championship just one year after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the school and displaced many of it's students. His winning team consisted of 10 players from 5 different schools who banded together in the aftermath of the disaster. Both Whitaker & Story were free to work, so the Weinsteins went after them immediately according to Variety. Production will begin in April, with a slow burner release expected in April to match the strategy that worked pretty well for THE GREAT DEBATERS ($25.8 million domestic). It's almost like two different scales of the spectrum with this one isn't it? Whitaker the amazingly gifted actor and Story the ultimate studio hack. Gonna be interesting to see how this unlikely duo turns out on film and whether Whittaker can beat out the acting skills of Samuel L. Jackson who did a similar role to this in 2004 with COACH CARTER.