Casey Affleck to Produce and Star in Drama About the Boston Marathon Bombing
Casey Affleck is taking his hometown pride to the big screen. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the actor (who appears in this fall’s Interstellar) is set to produce and star in Boston Strong, a drama about the aftermath of the 2013 bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The film has been adapted from the book of the same name, which will be published on Feb. 22, according to the book’s official Facebook page.
Written by Boston Herald reporter Dave Wedge and true crime writer Casey Sherman, the book Boston Strong tells the stories of those who survived the terrorist attack, which left three dead and hundreds wounded. “It just blew my mind how the pain continues for these people,” Sherman told Enterprise News in February. “The story we want to tell is different than others. I always go for the stories that are not the headlines.” The book was adapted into a screenplay by The Fighter writers Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasy, who also adapted Sherman’s book The Finest Hours. That film, about a daring Coast Guard rescue that took place off Cape Cod in a 1952 blizzard, is currently shooting in Boston — and not coincidentally, Casey Affleck is one of the stars.
Affleck, who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has a tangential personal connection to the Boston tragedy. Like his older brother Ben and their friend Matt Damon, he’s an alumnus of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School — the same public high school attended by alleged bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
