Olivia Wilde and Jon Hamm Join Clint Eastwood's THE BALLAD OF RICHARD JEWELL

Director Clint Eastwood continues to fill out the cast for his upcoming film project The Ballad of Richard Jewell. He recently cast Olivia Wilde and Jon Hamm in the film and they will star alongside Sam Rockwell as Jewell’s attorney and Kathy Bates as Jewell’s mother.

The film will tell the true story of Richard Jewell, “a security guard whose life was turned upside down in a moment after it was leaked by law enforcement to a reporter that Jewell was a possible suspect in the Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. From the moment he was outed by an article written by an overzealous reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jewell went from hero to one of the most hated men in America.”

Wilde will take on the role of real-life reporter Kathy Scruggs, who covered the event as it unfolded, and Hamm will play an FBI agent investigating the bombing.

Jewell is the security guard who discovered a suspicious backpack in the Olympics compound and cleared the area, saving people’s lives. Then he was falsely accused and became an outcast. “Even though the FBI cleared Jewell as a suspect three months later, the true American hero never fully got his reputation back or his confidence in himself, and his health was forever damaged. Jewell, who later became a police officer, died in 2007 of a heart attack at the age of 44.”

The film project in based on the Vanity Fair article “The Ballad Of Richard Jewell,” and it was adapted into a script by Billy Ray (Captain Phillips).

The film project was originally set up at Fox, but ended up landing at Warner Bros. after the Disney-Fox merger.

Source: Variety