Rid­ley Scott read­ies a peri­od piece with a trio of big-name writers

What­ev­er your opin­ion of Rid­ley Scott​‘s recent work, it’s impres­sive in and of itself that a direc­tor now eighty-one years old shows no signs what­so­ev­er of los­ing steam. If any­thing, he’s only worked hard­er as he’s got­ten longer in the tooth, with the new announce­ment of yet anoth­er ges­tat­ing project now in the works.

Yes­ter­day after­noon brought the news that Scott will direct a peri­od piece titled The Last Duel, an adap­ta­tion of a his­tor­i­cal nov­el set at the tail end of France’s medieval peri­od, in 1386. More curi­ous is his list of col­lab­o­ra­tors, how­ev­er, with three big names attached to draw up a script.

The Dead­line exclu­sive break­ing this news named Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener as the archi­tects behind the screen­play, an unlike­ly com­bi­na­tion of writ­ers. Damon and Affleck make for a nat­ur­al pair, as life­long friends in their first pro­fes­sion­al co-scribe gig since scor­ing an Oscar for their Good Will Hunt­ing script, but it’s anyone’s guess how they and their work will mesh with Holofcener’s.

Affleck and Damon (who have also been slat­ed to star in the film, as mor­tal ene­mies engag­ing one anoth­er in the last legal­ly sanc­tioned cer­e­mo­ni­al duel in France) pro­duced a real­i­ty pro­gram called Project Green­light not so long ago, in which they guide untest­ed young film­mak­ers through the cre­ation of an orig­i­nal film. They court­ed con­tro­ver­sy dur­ing this time for a sound­bite in which Damon over­ruled pro­duc­er Effie T. Brown about a call for diver­si­ty, launch­ing a con­ver­sa­tion con­cern­ing Damon and Affleck’s abil­i­ty to work well with oth­ers – par­tic­u­lar­ly women with strong per­son­al visions.

Which makes pair­ing them with Holofcener, an expe­ri­enced writer with her own style very much removed from the Affleck/​Damon usu­al, a cre­ative choice with unpre­dictable results. (The nature of this job is unclear, too; who’s doing rewrites on whom?) With three bold writ­ers all offer­ing their take on the mate­r­i­al, then hand­ing it over to a direc­tor with idea of his own, Scott’s next fea­ture could be his most sur­pris­ing in years. At the very least, the press tour should be a fun time.