Ben Affleck joins Anne Hathaway and Willem Dafoe in Netflix political thriller
"The Last Thing He Wanted" is slated for a 2019 debut.
Ben Affleck has signed onto a film that seems primed to throw him back into the world of U.S. covert operations explored in “Argo.”
According to Deadline, the Cambridge native has joined Anne Hathaway and Willem Dafoe in the cast of “The Last Thing He Wanted,” a political thriller from “Mudbound” director Dee Rees set to be distributed on Netflix.
Unlike “Argo,” which was based on a true story, “The Last Thing He Wanted” is based on a 1996 fiction novel of the same name by Joan Didion. It’s about a Washington Post reporter named Elena McMahon (Hathaway) who quits her job and decamps to Florida to visit her ailing father Richard (Dafoe), an aged gunrunner. Elena eventually becomes a pawn in a plot to covertly sell arms to rebels in Central America via the U.S. government, a plot that in some ways mirrors the real-life events of the Iran-Contra affair.
While there’s no official word on which character Affleck will play, the most obvious choice from Didion’s novel may be the role of Treat Morrison, a high-level government official who becomes romantically entangled with Hathaway’s character.
Also co-starring Toby Jones and Rosie Perez, “The Last Thing He Wanted” is set to debut on Netflix in 2019.
