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Kristen Stewart Getting in 'Focus' for 'Crazy, Stupid, Love' Directors

by Ben Pearson
November 5, 2012
Source: Variety

Directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa wrote and directed I Love You Phillip Morris back in '09 but really hit the mainstream with Crazy, Stupid, Love in 2011. Since then, they've been busy lining up new projects, the most prominent of which is a conman story called Focus that's set up at Warner Bros. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling were initially going to star at one point, and when those two had to move on, the writer/directors snagged Argo director Ben Affleck to play the male lead of a veteran conman. Now Variety reports that Twilight star Kristen Stewart is now in talks to play the female lead, new to grifting.

After the veteran conman gets romantically involved with the rookie, the story gets complicated when they run into each other again once they've gone their separate ways. Sounds a bit like the Tony Gilroy film Duplicity with a touch of Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men thrown in for good measure. For me, Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom is the ultimate conman movie that deconstructed the genre so perfectly that it makes watching anything else kind of fall flat (sort of like watching a horror movie after seeing Cabin in the Woods), so we'll see if the teaming of Affleck and Stewart with this material can bring a spark to the screen. It will be a little odd to see them playing lovers, considering Affleck is 40 and Kristen Stewart is only 22, but maybe Ficarra and Requa can find a way to avoid making it weird. Thoughts?

Filed under Casting, Movie News

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