Lars And The Real Girl Director May Helm Baseball Drama Million Dollar Arm, Starring Jon Hamm

Jon Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men
(Image credit: AMC)

He may not be directing the adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but filmmaker Craig Gillespie has kept busy since releasing his Fright Night remake last summer.

While he may not be bringing the period horror/comedy to theaters, this past July we learned that he had signed on to direct the adaptation of Susan Trott’s novel The Flamingo Thief, and very early in the year we learned that he would be joining filmmakers such as Russell Crowe, Toni Collette, Liev Schreiber and more directing a short film that will become part of the city-loving anthology Sydney Unplugged. And today we learn that yet another title has been added to Gillespie’s list of in-development projects.

Variety says that the Aussie filmmaker is now in talks to direct Million Dollar Arm, a new sports drama that was written by Tom McCarthy (Win, Win) and is set to star Mad Men lead Jon Hamm. Based on a true story, the film will tell the tale of J.B. Bernstein (Hamm), a sports agent who organized a reality show in India with a bunch of cricket players and ended up discovering Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, two pitchers who wound up playing Major League Baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The title of the movie comes from the name of the television show that Bernstein created.

Gillespie’s previous credits include the Oscar-nominated Lars and the Real Girl, the 2007 comedy Mr. Woodcock and six episodes of the Showtime series United States of Tara.

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Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.