Jeremy Renner is Crowned KING OF HEISTS!

Having won an Oscar nomination for robbing banks and generally just being an absolute bad-ass in Ben Affleck's heist movie The Town last year, Jeremy Renner is planning his next job! Deadline reports that Renner has attached himself to lead King of Heists, an adaptation of the J. North Conway book based on the true story of George Leslie, who successfully stole $3 million in cash and securities from the Manhattan Savings Institution in New York, 1878. Leslie was a trained architect who in his teenage years turned to robbing banks when his parents died and his mild-mannered, gentlemanly charm and high-class socialising made him an unsuspecting culprit for the high-stakes jobs he was pulling. Legend has it that Leslie would spend years planning many of his heists meticulously including building model replica's of his targets, choosing his team like his life depended on it (which it probably did) and doing mock-runs in empty houses to make sure everything would go to plan. His longevity made him a master of his profession, "King of Heists" as the title will tell us, lasting a decade in the game... way longer than Dillinger. No director is yet attached to the movie that Will Staples has wrote, one of his earliest deals as a screenwriter (he previously wrote the sci-fi script Myth that Sam Worthington is attached to). King of Heists is setup at The Combine, Renner's production outlet with Don Handfield where it will be produced with Black Bear Pictures who optioned the book and will finance development and filming. No distribution deal has been sought just yet. The movie is now competing with the Steve McQueen biopic which Renner & Handfield recently tasked James Gray (We Own The Night, Two Lovers) to write for the actor and Slingshot, €˜an underdog story set in the high-octane world of rally racing€™ - as The Combine's first output. Not to mention that he has gotta find time to for future installments in the Mission: Impossible, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and The Bourne Legacy franchises over the coming years! I do love a good heist movie and you all know how much I loved The Town. I'd definitely love to see this one get made...