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This past Sunday — July 21 — would have been Robin Williams’ 68th birthday.
Williams, perhaps more so than any other actor of his generation, was like a Hollywood father figure to us Millenials, a fact that makes his death still hard to cope with to this day.
So, to remember the supremely talented and heartwarming comedian, I spent the day crushing a handful of his most iconic films, finishing with the timeless Good Will Hunting.
Despite coming out over twenty years ago, Good Will Hunting more than stands the test of time, as it’s still as emotionally impactful today as it was when it first came out.
Good Will Hunting — written by lifelong friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck — put the two Boston-born stars on the map, as they took home the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and have since built impressive, two-decade-long careers on the back of that film’s success.
Now, 22 years after they first teamed up to win Oscar gold, Damon and Affleck are working together once again. According to Deadline, the pair are writing and set to star in The Last Duel, which is a revenge story based on a novel by Eric Jager.
Not only are the Academy Award-winning writers teaming up, but Deadline reports that iconic Alien director Ridley Scott — who recently worked with Damon on The Martian — is set to direct the film.
The script is almost done, written by Damon, Affleck and Nicole Holofcener, the Oscar-nominated writer and director. This is happening quickly and would be the first collaboration on a script between Damon and Affleck to get made since their Oscar-winning work on Good Will Hunting.
It’s a revenge story of two best friends. Damon and Affleck will play them. The main characters are the Norman knight Jean de Carrouges and the squire Jacques Le Gris. They were friends. One goes to war and returns to accuse Le Gris of raping his wife Margerite de Carrouges. No one will believe the woman, and the soldier appeals to the king of France to undo a decision handed down by Count Pierre d’Anencon, which favored Le Gris.
The decision handed down is that the two men fight a duel to the death. The one left alive would be declared the winner as a sign of God’s will. And if Jean de Carrouges loses, his wife will be burned at the stake for punishment for her false accusation. [Deadline]
As Deadline notes, given their recent acquisition of Fox, the script is now currently in the control of Disney. While The Last Duel may not be up Disney’s alley, the report states that essentially every major Hollywood studio is waiting in the wings to claim the film’s rights should the Mouse House decide to pass.