Matt Damon in Talks to Play Bobby Kennedy

Here's a pretty good cluster of movie stuff: A Bobby Kennedy bio starring Matt Damon and directed by Gary Ross. It's close to happening, so says Deadline, with the only stumbling block being the unwritten script, which Damon could ultimately turn down.

The movie would be based on Robert Kennedy: His Life, the biography by Evan Thomas. It's been optioned by Landscape Entertainment, and this would represent a swift step forward for the production company responsible for John Tucker Must Die, Sleepover, and very little else. As you might expect, "The film will trace RFK's transformation from the younger brother in the shadow brother President John F. Kennedy to a strong national leader in his own right before he was gunned down in 1968."

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Gary Ross May Helm 'Matt Helm' Before 'Venom'

Last week, I made an off-hand comment that I'd like to see writer-director Gary Ross work more often. I mean, Pleasantville and Seabiscuit are the only films he's directed, even though he has a couple other projects down the road a piece. He's been linked to Venom, the Spider-Man spin-off he would tackle after writing the script for Spider-Man 4, and now he might take on another hot property.

The Playlist writes that Ross may take over the director's chair for Matt Helm, which was at the center of the messy Spielberg-DreamWorks-Paramount fallout earlier this year. Spielberg was supposed to direct it for Paramount, but the studio won't let him go near its new Bournesque franchise. Matt Helm will be based on the Cold War spy novels by Donald Hamilton, updated to gravy train the way James Bond did. And Ross might be directing the suddenly hot Bradley Cooper, an actor studios have suddenly started circling for future franchise opportunities.

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Gary Ross to Write and Direct 'Venom'?

Hmm...now this is interesting. As a fan of Gary Ross, I'd like to see the writer-director of Dave, Pleasantville, and Seabiscuit work a little more frequently. He's currently working on Tokyo Suckerpunch and the script for Spider-Man 4, and Variety says he might be the latest big name director to helm a Marvel Comics movie.

The rumor is that he's going to direct Venom, as well as polish the script turned in by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the guys riding highest on the success of Zombieland. As great as that screenplay was, Gary Ross brings a little more experience with character development, although you could obviously claim that his style is between 90 and 180 degrees away from where Venom should optimally be. We don't know much else other than Topher Grace shouldn't be waiting for a call - no surprise - and that Sony wants to start over from scratch with the character.

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Gary Ross Brought In to Rewrite 'Spider-Man 4'

To paraphrase George Clooney, if you can get Gary Ross for your movie, get Gary Ross for your movie. Clooney was referring to Don Cheadle when he said that on the set of Out of Sight, but it's just as true about the writer of Big and the writer-director of Dave, Pleasantville, and Seabiscuit. Gary Ross knows what he's doing.

And now there's a legitimate reason to wait for what's next from Spider-Man 4, the film Ross was just hired by Sony to rewrite, according to Variety. Regular readers here know my big concern about the recent Transformers movie is that there's no story. A plot, sure, but the characters don't even interact, and only one has something close to a purpose. That's bad writing. It also afflicted Spider-Man 3. Gary Ross doesn't, as a general rule, write bad scripts. I'll forgive Lassie and Mr. Baseball, which were commissioned jobs and not his own stories from the beginning. He was hired help, and there were co-writers. Even last year's Despereaux was pretty good, though not truly his style. Then again, neither is Spider-Man, which like his only bad screenplays, isn't exactly "his" project. But Ross is one of the best at getting his characters from Point A to Point B without the skeleton of the story outline showing through. He's thorough and he gives the actors something to do.

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