Pitt, LaBeouf Offered Leads in Summit's 'Riptide'

Summit is riding high these days. After launching as an independent distributor in 2006, the studio has one of the biggest franchises around in Twilight, and was the distributor of the most recent Best Picture winner, The Hurt Locker. And at the rate it's going, it could pass some of the older, more venerated studios in the annual rundown; last year, for example, Summit placed seventh in total revenue. So now Summit is taking aim at movie stars, something the studio hasn't done very much of to this point. Pajiba reports that the studio is setting up a whodunit called Riptide, which mercifully is not based on the NBC action adventure show from the 1980s, since there's so much of that going on. Peter Morgan has re-written the script, so that's a plus, and Summit is pursuing Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf. "It's about a handyman, a young stock broker, and the stock broker's girlfriend," comments Pajiba. "One of the men is found dead floating in the sea. The girlfriend is found at a nearby hotel. An investigator is called in to figure out what happened and why." I heart whodunits, so this is great news to me, because the setup is classic genre stuff. Pitt would reportedly play the investigator and LaBeouf, using all that Wall Street training, has been pitched the offer for the stock broker. Based on our current distrust of all things Wall Street, let's hope it's the stock broker who's floating in the ocean. I'm souring on LaBeouf in general, though, and think something like this could be a real break-out role for someone who needs it. Shia does not, nor has he really lived up to the promise of being handed two big league franchises. Of course, nobody's taken the offers yet, so who knows how it will play out. But a whodunit with Peter Morgan's name on it already has my money.

Comments

[Will]

Wait, so no 'Roboz'?

...Lame.