'Switch' - A 'Jackie Brown' Prequel Starring John Hawkes

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John Hawkes To Star In ‘Jackie Brown’ Prequel ‘Switch’

John Hawkes as a young Robert De Niro and Mos Def as a young Samuel L. Jackson? Sounds fantastic and it’s actually happening. Hawkes and yasiin bey (Mos Def’s new name) will star in Switch, based on an Elmore Leonard novel, written and directed by Dan Schechter. They’ll play Louis Gara and Ordell Robbie respectively, characters made famous by De Niro and Jackson in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Switch takes places 15 years before Tarantino’s film (itself an adaptation of Leonard’s novel Rum Punch) and features Louis and Ordell as they attempt to kidnap a corrupt real estate broker.

Variety exclusively broke the news about the casting, which is the first major movement on the project in almost two years since it was announced that Schechter was scripting an adaptation. (It has since dropped the “The” from the title, probably because of the Jason Bateman/Jennifer Aniston film of the same name.) According to the story, Schechter wrote the screenplay on spec without Leonard’s knowledge or involvement and blindly sent it to his agent. Luckily, the author loved it and jumped on board as an producer. Filming starts in May.

Here’s the Amazon description from the 2002 novel.

Both De Niro and Jackson were hilarious playing Ordell and Louis in Jackie Brown and it should be interesting to compare and contrast how Hawkes and bey interpret the same characters.

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