EXCLUSIVE: Yellowstone star Kelly Reilly and Oscar nominee David Strathairn (Good Night, And Good Luck) are in final negotiations to join Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) and Boyd Holbrook (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) in Last Meals.
Theo Rossi (Sons of Anarchy) and Joshua Boone (A Jazzman’s Blues) are also joining the drama which begins filming in Atlanta on November 28 with an interim agreement.
Tony-winner Kenny Leon (Fences) is newly aboard to direct.
Jackson will play Walter, a disgraced former White House chef who finds himself 30 years later cooking last meals for death row inmates, forming an unlikely bond with Reed, a prisoner on a hunger strike whose innocence Walter begins to believe in. With the help of Hannah (Reilly), the trio take on a politically motivated prison head (Strathairn), while bringing dignity and hope to their fellow inmates (Rossi, Boone among others).
Sentient’s Renee Tab is producing with Christopher Tuffin alongside Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreary of Revelations Entertainment, Gary Luchessi and Michael McKay.
The Solution’s Lisa Wilson is handling international sales. CAA Media Finance and Sentient are repping domestic rights.
The film is based on the 2016 Nicholls Fellowship-winning screenplay Death Of An Ortolan by Justin Piasecki, who recently wrote the Riz Ahmed and Lily James starrer Relay, as well as Stakehorse, which was acquired by Amazon in a bidding war.
Financiers are Sentient and Gala Media Capital in association with Partners in Kind executive producers Gillian Hormel and Mary Aloe, SquareOne Productions executive producer Al Munteanu, Black Bench Productions executive producer Charles Porter, Miller Way executive producers Jeeny and Michael Miller, executive producer Karan Hass and Happy Place executive producers Tara Razavi and Jake Martin.
All deals were negotiated on behalf of the production by attorneys Jere Hausfater, Jeff Konvitz, Michael Roban and Kevin Mills of Kaye and Mills.
Flight star Reilly can currently be seen in Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice. Veteran stage and screen director Leon’s current play, Purlie Victorious, starring Leslie Odom Jr., recently opened on Broadway. He also recently directed the stage-to-screen adaptation of American Son, starring Kerry Washington, for Netflix. The acclaimed director is known for his work on plays including Fences with Denzel Washington, A Soldier’s Play, A Raisin in the Sun also starring Washington, and The Mountaintop starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett.
Kenny Leon and Kelly Reilly are repped by CAA. David Strathairn is repped by Madeline Ryan at Ryan Entertainment and CAA. Theo Rossi is repped by Paradigm Talent Agency, and Carolyn Conrad and Jennia Iordanou at SRDA.
Samuel L. Jackson is repped by Anonymous Content, CAA at Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner & Klein.
