Anton Corbijn to Direct James Dean Film ‘Life’

Anton Corbijn has come aboard to direct Life, a true story about the friendship between James Dean and Life Magazine photographer Dennis Stock.

Iain Canning, who produced the Oscar-winning drama The King’s Speech and the acclaimed Michael Fassbender drama Shame, is producing Life with his See-Saw Films partner, Emile Sherman.

Stock was a young photographer working for the Magnum agency when he received an assignment that changed his life: to shoot a free-spirited actor named James Dean.

The gig became a personal journey for both as they traveled from L.A. to New York to Indiana. During the trip, Stock captured now-iconic images of the actor before he was launched to stardom with East of Eden (1955).

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The movie, with a script by Luke Davies and a budget in the $10 million to $15 million range, is eyeing a shoot in early 2014.

Life continues cinema’s recent fascination with its Silver Age, bringing to the big screen small-scale stories featuring big personalities, such as My Week With Marilyn and Hitchcock.

Corbjin is the Dutch director behind 2007’s award-winning Control, the biopic of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, which Canning executive produced. He also directed the George Clooney thriller The American and has A Most Wanted Man, a terrorist thriller starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rachel McAdams, in the pipeline.

He is repped by CAA and U.K.’s Independent Talent Group.

See-Saw is currently in postproduction on Tracks, directed by John Curran and starring Mia Wasikowska. Its first television miniseries, Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake, starred Elisabeth Moss and Holly Hunter and just finished its run on the Sundance Channel.

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