Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christina Hendricks And More Join God's Pocket

John Slattery's tenure on the long-running series Mad Men has afforded him the opportunity to flex his filmmaker muscle, having directed four episodes of the show, but now he's ready to take his behind-the-scenes prowess to the big screen. And what's more, he's bringing one of his co-stars, Academy Award winner, and two of the best character actors we have along with him.

According to Deadline, Slattery is now getting ready to make his feature directorial debut on God's Pocket, an adaptation of the Pete Dexter novel that he scripted with Alex Metcalf, and has signed Christina Hendricks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, and John Turturro to star. Set in South Philidelphia, the story follows a man named Mickey, whose psychotic stepson is killed on a construction site due to an "accident." While Mickey tries to quietly get rid of the body, his life becomes complicated when a reporter starts snooping around. From there, the site says, the protagonist "finds himself stuck in a life and death struggle between a body he can’t bury, a wife he can’t please and a debt he can’t pay." The article makes no mention of what characters any of the actors will be playing. The film is being sold at the Cannes Film Festival, but there's no mention of when production is scheduled to start.

Speaking of directorial debuts, Hendricks is currently in production on Ryan Gosling's, a fantasy thriller called How To Catch A Monster. Hoffman will be seen later this year in both The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, in which he plays Plutarch Heavensbee; and the John le Carre adapted thriller A Most Wanted Man. Jenkins has both White House Down and Turbo due out this summer, and Turturro is in post-production on his latest directorial effort, Fading Gigolo.

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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.