Inspired by the confessional intimacy afforded by red carpet season, Ben Affleck has finally cast aside all speculation and confirmed which Boston-set movie he will make next in Boston, thus ending his Argo phase of experimenting with fantastical, non-Boston settings. Affleck tells MTV his next directing project will be the gangster story Live By Night, Affleck’s second adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel (after Gone Baby Gone), and one that has so many of the characteristics that Affleck finds appealing about stories set in Boston, such as their taking place almost entirely in Boston.


Published last fall, Live By Night is the Prohibition-era-Boston tale of a Boston police captain’s son who turns Boston outlaw, tangling with both Boston’s mobsters and his own Boston father’s Boston police force. It’s a taut, Boston-y thriller, chock-full of Boston on nearly every page, and one that should allow Affleck to explore how the Boston of yore relates to the modern, universal Boston we all live in. Unfortunately, Affleck says his commitment to getting Live By Night done by a certain deadline forced him to drop out of starring in the upcoming Focus. Of course, that film is set to shoot in Buenos Aires, a city crippled by the poverty of its not being Boston, and co-star Kristen Stewart, who also couldn’t be Boston if she tried. [via Coming Soon]