Logan Lerman Will Play a Young Lee Atwater and Asa Butterfield Will Play Karl Rove in COLLEGE REPUBLICANS

James Schamus, best known for writing the films Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hulk, and his directorial debut, Indignation, is taking the director’s chair for the upcoming film College Republicans. Deadline describes the film as “a fact-inspired Dirty Rotten Scoundrels-style coming of age story about top Republican operatives.”

Logan Lerman (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Hunters) is set to star as a young Lee Atwater, along with Asa Butterfield (Ender’s Game, Sex Education) as Karl Rove, and Kristine Froseth (The Assistant, The Society) as composite character Kate King, who “threatens their dreams of glory.”

Here’s the full synopsis:

The film is set in the Summer of 1973, as America witnesses the dirtiest election in its history – for the chairmanship of the national College Republicans club. Young Karl Rove embarks with his not-to-be-trusted campaign manager Lee Atwater on a backroom vote-getting – and vote-stealing – road trip through the South. Among the future Republican titans they form uneasy alliances with — and betray whenever convenient — include Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Jeff Sessions. But when Atwater meets his duplicitous match in a beautiful young Republican operative, their dreams of victory bring them all too close to humiliating, career-ending defeat.

Billions writer/producer Wes Jones penned the script, topping the Black list in 2010. It is “based on Jones’s meticulous research, and tells the darkly comic origin story of the modern GOP and the young opportunists who ended up, years later, reshaping the political landscape.” Production is set to begin in the Spring of 2021.