When you make a movie as absurdly good as The Proposition, you’re bound to get the attention of many. When your next movie is a well-received, gritty adaptation of an almost unadaptable book, you get a free pass to do pretty much whatever you want and people will be lining up at your door. That guy, unfortunately, is not you, but John Hillcoat and that movie he is working on as his follow up to the inevitably successful The Road is a period drama titled The Wettest County in the World, an adaptation of Matt Bondurant’s book about his grandfather and two great-uncles and their Depression-era bootlegging business. From the Amazon description of the book:

This family saga follows the Bondurants, bootlegging brothers runnin’ stills, runnin’ loads, and runnin’ from the law in Depression-era Virginia. The book is mainly narrated through the experience of the youngest Bondurant, Jack (in truth, a grandfather of the author), and his family’s moonshine enterprise supplies the action in a plot that evokes the culture of distilling and distributing white lightning. To optimistic Jack, bootlegging is both a bond to his older brothers, Forrest and Howard, and a means to make cash to impress a girl. Forrest, by contrast, is taciturn and suspicious: the world is violent, and he meets it on that ground. Tender of the stills and imbiber from same, burly Howard is always ready to take on the Bondurants’ enemies, corrupt law officers. Wending through this conflict in flash-forward mode is novelist Sherwood Anderson, who plumbs the Bondurant story a few years after the brothers’ climactic confrontation with the county sheriff. Descriptively gritty and emotionally resonant, novelist Bondurant dramatically projects the poverty and danger at the heart of the old-time bootlegging life.

The names that are interested in this project according to The Hollywood Reporter? Ryan Gosling, Shia LaBeouf, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Dano and Michael Shannon. This sounds absolutely awesome. Unfortunately, there is no financing or start date for this yet, but with all of these names potentially involved, it should only be a matter of time. I shiver with delight at the thought of all these folks getting involved. Obviously, Gosling is a man-crush, LaBeouf is solid when he’s not making crappy Michael Bay movies, Paul Dano is one of the best young actors out there, and Michael Shannon is Michael freaking Shannon. We have the three brothers and reporter right there (and we could go on and speculate who could play which character, but we won’t).

What do you think? Is there a more exciting up-and-coming director out there than John Hillcoat?