Austin Butler to Star in Director Darren Aronofsky’s Crime Thriller CAUGHT STEALING

Austin Butler (Elvis, Masters of the Air) is set to star in director Darren Aronofsky’s next film project, a crime thriller titled Caught Stealing. The movie is based on the book by Charlie Huston, who will also write the script.

The story follows Hank Thompson, “a burned-out former baseball player, as he’s unwittingly plunged into a wild fight for survival in the downtown criminal underworld of ‘90s NYC.”

Aronofsky said in a statement: “I am excited to be teaming up with my old friends at Sony Pictures to bring Charlie’s adrenaline-soaked roller coaster ride to life. I can’t wait to start working with Austin and my family of NYC filmmakers.”

Sanford Panitch, President of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture Group added: “Darren is one of the most brilliant audiovisual storytellers in the world, and adapting these wonderful books by Charlie Huston for Austin to star was too exciting an opportunity to not be a part of.”

This sounds like a great project for both Butler and Aronofsky. Here’s a full description form the book:

It’s three thousand miles from the green fields of glory, where Henry “call me Hank” Thompson once played California baseball, to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the tenements are old, the rents are high, and the drunks are dirty. But now Hank is here, working as a bartender and taking care of a cat named Bud who is surely going to get him killed.

It begins when Hank’s neighbor, Russ, has to leave town in a rush and hands over Bud in a carrier. But it isn’t until two Russians in tracksuits drag Hank over the bar at the joint where he works and beat him to a pulp that he starts to get the idea: Someone wants something from him. He just doesn’t know what it is, where it is, or how to make them understand he doesn’t have it.

Within twenty-four hours Hank is running over rooftops, swinging his old aluminum bat for the sweet spot of a guy’s head, playing hide and seek with the NYPD, riding the subway with a dead man at his side, and counting a whole lot of cash on a concrete floor.

All because of two cowboys, two Russian mafia men, and some of the weirdest goons ever assembled in one place. All because of Bud. All because once, in another life, in another world, the only thing Hank wanted was to take third base—without getting caught.

This seems like a different kind of project for Aronofsky, and I’m sure that he’ll deliver a great film.