Matt Damon is teaming up with director Tom McCarthy for new drama Stillwater.
The Bourne Identity actor will play Bill, an oil rig roughneck from Oklahoma who travels to Marseille in France to visit his estranged daughter who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit.
Bill makes it his mission to exonerate his daughter, although he is confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system.
According to editors at Variety, McCarthy, who won an Oscar for writing 2015's Spotlight, which also won Best Film, approached the Ocean's Eleven star with the Stillwater script and Damon jumped at the opportunity, because they had been very interested in working together after Damon had to pass on Spotlight due to scheduling conflicts.
The 48-year-old attached himself to the project back in May and it was quickly acquired by executives at Participant, who had previously worked with McCarthy on his Oscar-winning drama.
"This is a wonderful script, centred on universal themes of connection and the search for truth, and we couldn't be more excited to bring it to audiences around the world," Participant chief executive officer David Linde told the publication.
McCarthy co-wrote the script with Thomas Bidegain and Noe Debre, and will also serve as a producer alongside Liza Chasin, Jonathan King, Jeff Skoll and Mari Jo Winkler-Ioffreda.
"Tom, Thomas and Noe have written a complex, surprising and emotional story, and Tom is crafting a film that asks us to consider how we engage with each other in an increasingly connected but also fragmented world," said King and Chasin. "Matt is the perfect actor to stand at the centre of it all."
Damon can next been seeing in Ford v Ferrari, alongside Christian Bale, while McCarthy recently developed the TV series The Loudest Voice, about the rise and fall of Fox News executive Roger Ailes.
