One of the longest-running friendships in cinema is back for another movie: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon will be working on the new Netflix crime thriller Animals, with Damon in the lead role and Affleck in the director's chair.
The duo will be co-producing the new Netflix movie via their own Artists Equity studio, which produced last year's hit blockbuster drama Air about Nike's partnership with Michael Jordan.
The film may begin shooting in LA as soon as March 2024, and it sounds like it'll be edge-of-the-seat stuff. The movie, which has had several titles including Be Gentlemen and The Animals of Los Angeles before ending up with the more stripped back Animals, sounds like it'll be quite the ride.
What is Animals about?
As The Hollywood Reporter explains, the film is about a mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped – and who, alongside his wife, has to get his hands dirty in order to save their son. With enemies all around, both political and personal, it sounds like things are going to get pretty messy. Are the animals of the title the bad guys, the good guys or both?
That's as much as we know about the movie so far – more plot details and cast announcements are still to come. But according to Deadline the filming is part of a really busy slate for Damon. As soon as he's done shooting Animals he'll be moving on to the sequel to The Accountant, which is scheduled for production later this year.
The film-making duo have been friends since forever. Their first movie together was 1992's School Ties, and their best-known collaboration, 1997's Good Will Hunting, bagged them an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Personally my favorite is their turn in Kevin Smith's 1999 movie Dogma, in which they play a pair of fallen angels wreaking absolute havoc on Earth – sadly that's not currently available online though due to an ongoing dispute with Harvey Weinstein, who owns the rights. According to Smith, Weinstein is "sitting his fat ass on my movie".
