Clive Owen as a philanderer, with a hint of ‘The Sitter’

EXCLUSIVE: Sometimes the best movies come out of unexpected collaborations — e.g., Darren Aronofsky directing Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler” (and getting him an Oscar nomination).

In that spirit, a new Hollywood project we’ve just heard about seemed worth sharing. Clive Owen, the Oscar and Emmy nominee known for movies like “Closer” and “Children of Men,” will team up with the writers Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka.

Gatewood and Tanaka are best known as the scribes who wrote “The Sitter,” the don’t-call-it-a-remake spin on “Adventures in Babysitting” starring Jonah Hill from last year. They’ve also penned a movie reboot of “Baywatch,” bringing back your childhood in another way.

But they’ll be making their directorial debut with a script they wrote called “The King of the Castle,” in which Owen will star, according to a person familiar with the project who was not authorized to talk about it publicly.

The comedy, which has been generating interest in town for some time, has a promising log line: It will center on a philanderer who is blackmailed by a teenager. (Owen will play said Lothario.)

In addition to Owen, the movie has a pedigree in other ways: It will be financed by Benaroya Pictures (“Margin Call”) and produced by Jonathan Gordon (“The Silver Linings Playbook”).

Owen’s been toiling in straight-faced genre pieces lately like “Shadow Dancer” and “Killer Elite,” as well as HBO-ish dramas such as “Hemingway and Gellhorn.” A comedy could do him, and us, a world of good.

ALSO:

Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman celebrate Emmy nods

Love is a battlefield in “Hemingway and Gellhorn”

Movie review: ‘The Sitter’

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