George Clooney is in talks to lead the cast of Alexander Payne’s next film, The Descendants, according to Variety. The project is based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings. Here’s a blurb from the book:
Hemmings’s bittersweet debut novel stars besieged and wryly introspective attorney Matt King, the land-rich descendant of Hawaiian royalty and American missionaries and entrepreneurs. He wrestles with the decision of whether to keep his swath of valuable inherited land or sell it to a real estate developer. But even more critical, Matt also has to decide whether to pull the plug on his wife, Joanie, who has been in an irreversible coma for 23 days following a boat-racing accident. Then Matt finds out that Joanie was having an affair with real estate broker Brian Speer, impelling him to travel with his two daughters—precocious 10-year-old Scottie and fresh from rehab 17-year-old Alex—from Oahu to Kauai to confront Brian. Matt finds out the truth about Joanie and Brian, which influences his decision about what to do with his family’s on-the-block land and complicates his plans for Joanie. Matt’s journey with his girls forms the emotional core of this sharply observed, frequently hilarious and intermittently heartbreaking look at a well-meaning but confused father trying to hold together his unconventional family.
Clooney would play Matt King. The script was written by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, which would make this the first of Payne’s films that he didn’t also write. Payne previously directed Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt and Sideways.
