Ben Affleck May Direct Historical Epic Bunker Hill

Ben Affleck is now a Best Director Oscar winner, but since he complete Argo, he’s been careful not to rush into another movie, instead mulling his options, putting a few projects into development as well as loosely attaching himself to a couple of others.

Now there’s another one in the mix, as Deadline reports that Warner Bros. has picked up the rights to Nathaniel Philbrick’s upcoming book ‘Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution’ as a potential vehicle for Affleck. It would take Ben back to his native Boston, although a couple of centuries ago.

Here’s the description of the book from Philbrick’s website, ‘Boston in 1775 is an island city occupied by British troops after a series of incendiary incidents by patriots who range from sober citizens to thuggish vigilantes. After the Boston Tea Party, British and American soldiers and Massachusetts residents have warily manoeuvred around each other until April 19, when violence finally erupts at Lexington and Concord. In June, however, with the city cut off from supplies by a British blockade and Patriot militia poised in siege, skirmishes give way to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

‘It would be the bloodiest battle of the Revolution to come, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists. Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to every aspect of the story. He finds new characters, and new facets to familiar ones. The real work of choreographing rebellion falls to a thirty-three year old physician named Joseph Warren who emerges as the on-the-ground leader of the Patriot cause and is fated to die at Bunker Hill. Others in the cast include Paul Revere, Warren’s fiancé the poet Mercy Scollay, a newly recruited George Washington, the reluctant British combatant General Thomas Gage and his more bellicose successor William Howe, who leads the three charges at Bunker Hill and presides over the claustrophobic cauldron of a city under siege as both sides play a nervy game of brinkmanship for control. With passion and insight, Philbrick reconstructs the revolutionary landscape-geographic and ideological-in a mesmerizing narrative of the robust, messy, blisteringly real origins of America.’

If Affleck does make, it’s would be a huge project, although as he proved when he recreated the 70s for Argo, he’s got a great eye period detail.

This isn’t likely to be his next film though, as it’s believed he’ll take on an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Live By Night next.