Shia LaBeouf to star in crime thriller God of the Rodeo
The 'Transformers' star, 38, has signed on to lead director Rosalind Ross' upcoming movie, which will be based on the reports of Daniel Bergner from inside the deadliest prison in the American South.
Set in the harsh confines of Louisiana's Angola Prison in 1967, 'God of the Rodeo' follows Buckkey, a hardened inmate who discovers a faint hope of redemption through an unexpected chance - the prison's first inmate rodeo.
As Buckkey and his fellow prisoners train for what may be their final shot at dignity, they come to realise the rodeo is no heroic contest, but a brutal spectacle.
Designed to entertain the public and feed the warden's messianic ambitions, it becomes a punishing battle for survival masked as sport.
As well as directing 'God of the Rodeo', Ross is set to write the movie's script.
Meanwhile, Sir Ridley Scott and Michael Pruss are to produce 'God of the Rodeo' through Scott Free Films, alongside Giannina Scott under her Cara Films banner.
LaBeouf could recently be seen in Francis Ford Coppola's 'Megalopolis', in which he starred opposite the likes of Adam Driver and Jon Voight.
The filmmaker previously explained he chose to cast "cancelled" actors like LaBeouf - who has faced allegations of sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress from former girlfriend FKA Twigs - in order to avoid 'Megalopolis' being written off as a "woke" movie that was "lecturing viewers".
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, he said: "What I didn't want to happen is that we're deemed some woke Hollywood production that's simply lecturing viewers.
"There were people who are archconservatives and others who are extremely politically progressive. But we were all working on one film together. That was interesting, I thought."
'The Godfather' director praised LaBeouf for his work on 'Megalopolis', though revealed the actor had "deliberately" tried to create tension between the two creatives.
He explained: "Shia really took to it. I had no experience working with him prior to this, but he deliberately sets up a tension between himself and the director to an extreme degree.
"He reminds me of Dennis Hopper, who would do something similar, and then you'd say, 'Just go do anything,' and then they go off and do something brilliant."
'Megalopolis' - which also stars Aubrey Plaza, Nathalie Emmanuel and Giancarlo Esposito - takes place in a decaying future New York City, where a visionary architect battles political corruption and personal betrayal as he attempts to rebuild the city into a utopia called Megalopolis.
Coppola also said he hoped audiences would resonate with the "vision of hope" woven throughout the movie, which polarised critics and ended up disappointing at the box office.
Speaking at the Toronto International Film Festival, the filmmaker said: "It's a Roman epic, what can I say? It's a dive into a world that exists more than it should. Of course, it's about loyalty, but ultimately in the end it's a vision of hope.
"There's always the vision of human beings that are great and are capable of dealing with any challenge they have to make a beautiful world for ourselves and for our children. It's a hopeful film."
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