Ben Affleck may soon be starring in a movie version of J.R. Moehringer’s Kirkus-starred 2005 memoir, The Tender Bar, according to Deadline, with George Clooney onboard as co-producer and director.
In the book, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Moehringer shares his memories of growing up on Long Island in the 1970s and ’80s. His father was absent from home, and Moehringer took to hanging out at Publicans, a Manhasset saloon where his Uncle Charlie tended bar. There, he got to know an array of “poets, bookies, Vietnam vets, lawyers, actors, athletes, misfits and dreamers,” as Kirkus’ reviewer put it, who had “Runyonesque nicknames like Bob the Cop, Cager, Stinky, Colt, Smelly, Jimbo, Fast Eddy and Bobo.” Kirkus called the book “a straight-up account of masculinity, maturity and memory that leaves a smile on the face and an ache in the heart.”
Amazon Studios is producing the adaptation, but it’s unclear whether the eventual film would be released in theaters or go directly to the Amazon Prime Video streaming service. No prospective release date was announced at this early stage.
Affleck has been involved in several other book adaptations. He directed and starred in Argo, the Best Picture Oscar–winning 2012 film based, in part, on Antonio J. Mendez’s 1999 memoir, The Master of Disguise: My Life in the CIA; that movie was co-produced by Clooney as well. Affleck also appeared in 2014’s Gone Girl, based on Gillian Flynn’s Kirkus-starred bestseller. Most recently, he co-starred in Deep Water, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1957 novel, set to premiere next summer.
Clooney directed The Midnight Sky, an upcoming film based on Lily Brooks-Dalton’s 2016 SF novel, Good Morning, Midnight; it’s headed to Netflix on Dec. 23.
Moehringer is also a novelist, whose 2012 historical novel, Sutton, about bank robber Willie Sutton, also received a Kirkus Star.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
