The Boys in the Boat: Callum Turner to star in George Clooney & Grant Heslov film

As George Clooney prepares to serve audiences his latest feature, The Tender Bar, the multi-talented filmmaker is busy planning his next film, The Boys in the Boat. The project is getting ready to set sail at MGM and Smokehouse Pictures with Clooney and his Smokehouse partner Grant Heslov co-directing. Per Deadline, we now know that Callum Turner will star in the upcoming film.

With Mark L. Smith adapting the screenplay, The Boys in the Boat is based on the New York Times bestselling author Daniel James Brown’s 2013 novel The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The story tells the exultant underdog tale of the University of Washington men’s rowing team, who stunned the world by winning gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Clooney has wanted to bring this inspiring story to the screen for some time now but ultimately chose to direct The Tender Bar first. Now that The Tender Bar, starring Ben Affleck, Tye Sheridan, and Daniel Ranieri is complete and ready to be served to audiences this December, work can finally begin on his next ambitious project.

Callum Turner made quite the name for himself after his breakout role in Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room. With his star steadily on the rise, Turner was asked to star in Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s Masters of the Air for Apple. The limited series is a continuation of the Band of Brothers and The Pacific franchise. No Time to Die‘s Cary Fukunaga will direct.

Additional casting for The Boys in the Boat is underway. Meanwhile, Clooney’s The Tender Bar is just around the corner. The Tender Bar tells the story of J.R. (Sheridan), a fatherless boy growing up in the glow of a bar where the bartender, his Uncle Charlie (Affleck), is the sharpest and most colorful of an assortment of quirky and demonstrative father figures. As the boy’s determined mother (Rabe) struggles to provide her son with opportunities denied to her — and leave the dilapidated home of her outrageous if begrudgingly supportive father (Christopher Lloyd) — J.R. begins to gamely, if not always gracefully, pursue his romantic and professional dreams — with one foot persistently placed in Uncle Charlie’s bar.

Based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar opens its doors in theaters nationwide on December 22, 2021, and globally on Amazon Prime Video on January 7, 2022.