From the kitchen to corruption, The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White is now being eyed for The Seven Five, a movie based on the 2014 documentary of the same name to be directed by Ben Stiller.
While the role that White is apparently circling for The Seven Five has yet to be revealed, it was reported back in 2020 that the likes of Nicholas Hoult and Aaron Taylor-Johnson were linked to play Michael Dowd, who was considered the “ringleader” of a net of corruption that ran through the New York City police department in the 1980s. One could assume that neither of these casting decisions worked out or that White could be in talks for the role of Patrick Eugene McKenna, another key player in the NYPD.
Regardless of Jeremy Allen White’s role at this time, this isn’t the first attempt to get the documentary turned into a narrative. An adaptation of The Seven Five has been in the works for years at this point, with White Boy Rick’s Yann Denage tapped to direct early on. At that point, the screenplay was being written by Out of Sight’s Scott Frank. A few years later, I, Tonya’s Craig Gillespie was hired for directing duties in another effort that went by the wayside. After bouncing around different studios, it finally came to Ben Stiller, who will be directing a script from Poor Thing’s Tony McNamara.
Here is the official synopsis for The Seven Five, as per DOC NYC where the documentary premiered in 2014: “For Michael Dowd, being a police officer wasn’t a calling, it was just a job— and, assigned to the 75th Precinct in crime-ridden East New York, not an easy or lucrative one. Seizing the opportunity to profit, he stole money from drug dealers, eventually recruiting his partner into an expanding criminal ring. Their 1992 arrest exposed widespread corruption in the NYPD. Weaving together Dowd’s revelatory testimony from the investigation, dramatic surveillance footage and interviews with the primary players, The Seven Five tells his incendiary tale.”
If things work out for Jeremy Allen White being cast in The Seven Five, it won’t be the first time he played a real-life figure, having just portrayed the late Kerry Von Erich in The Iron Claw. He, too, is tapped to play Bruce Springsteen in a movie about the making of his 1982 album Nebraska.
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