EXCLUSIVE: Taylor John Smith (Where The Crawdads Sing) is attached to star in What’s Left of Us, based on the 2009 memoir by Ritchie Farrell who has adapted for screen.
The project marks the next directing effort of The Fighter and Patriot’s Day scribe Paul Tamasy who most recently made his directorial debut on Paramount acquisition Depravity, also starring Smith.
What’s Left of Us charts the tough upbringing of Farrell in a working class neighbourhood in Massachusetts. To overcome a birth defect, his father pushed him to become a star athlete – sometimes he would use a belt as a teaching tool. Once, he used an electric carving knife. By the time he was 30, he was a heroin addict, stealing from friends, shooting up during visits to his children and running from shameful family secrets.
The project will mark the fifth collaboration between producer Dorothy Aufiero and Tamasy, after they worked on Depravity, The Fighter, The Finest Hours and Patriot’s Day, and the second collaboration between Tamasy and producer Bettina Tendler O’Mara who produced Tamasy’s script Walking Across Egypt starring Ellen Burstyn, Mark Hamill and Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
Taylor John Smith, also known for HBO’s Sharp Objects, recently starred in box office hit Where the Crawdads Sing and Tamasy’s Depravity, starring alongside Sasha Luss, Victoria Justice and Dermot Mulroney.
Tamasy-scripted Guy Ritchie film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare will be released by Lionsgate April 19.
Tamasy is repped by WME and Circle of Confusion. Smith is repped by CAA, Vybe Trybe and Felker Toczek.
