Tobey Maguire out, John Cusack in for Lee Daniels’ next

PRECIOUS director Lee Daniels has had a tough time finding the right follow-up to his Oscar-nominated hit but looks to finally have settled on THE PAPERBOY. The project looked to be in jeopardy when star Tobey Maguire left the project but Daniels has booked John Cusack to fill in and filming is set to begin on the project later this year.

Maguire had been set to star in the film as a death row inmate who may have been wrongly convicted of killing a sheriff. His commitments to THE GREAT GATSBY forced him to back out of the film though and now Cusack will play the convict. The actor joins Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman and Matthew McConaughey in the film. Kidman would play a woman who falls in love with Cusack through a letter writing campaign and enlists two journalists (Efron and McConaughey) to help her investigate the killing.

Daniels had been prepping both SELMA, which had commitments from Hugh Jackman and Robert De Niro, a remake of NIGHTS OF CABRIA and THE BUTLER with Denzel Washington but none of those projects was able to get off the ground. PAPERBOY has more secure financing and looks to be good-to-go.