Bruce Dern and Dakota Johnson are joining Shia LaBeouf in The Peanut Butter Falcon.
Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz wrote and will direct the story about a crab fisherman as he embarks on a journey to get a young man with Down syndrome to a professional wresting school in rural North Carolina and away from the retirement home where he’s lived most of his life.
Newcomer Zachary Gottsagen, who is the inspiration for the film, will play the principal character of Zak.
Tim Zajaros and Christopher Lemole will produce and finance the film via their Armory Films banner. Bona Fide Productions’ Albert Berger will also produce along with Lije Sarki, David Thies and Ron Yerxa, who worked with Dern on 2013’s Nebraska. Grammy and Oscar winner T Bone Burnett will also produce the film, as well as the soundtrack.
Production will begin this month in Savannah, Ga.
Dern, who was a part of the ensemble in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, has a number of upcoming projects, including drama thriller Warning Shot, crime memoir White Boy Rick and Ted Kennedy biopic Chappaquiddick.
Johnson was last seen reprising her starring role in the second installment of the Fifty Shades series and is set for the third film, Fifty Shades Freed. She also is set to star opposite Tilda Swinton and Chloe Moretz in the ballerina drama Suspiria.
Dern is repped by Innovative Artists and Pure Arts; Johnson is repped by WME.
