Yesterday afternoon, Variety reported that Matt Damon has agreed to star in Hereafter, Clint Eastwood's next production, with a script by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen). Just hours later, Empire reported that Damon had also signed on to star in Steven Soderbergh's upcoming biopic of Liberace.
Although Warner Bros. is keeping the plot of Hereafter under wraps — describing it only as akin to The Sixth Sense — Movie Line, which claims to have a version of the script, has described the plot in extensive detail. Based on that description, the movie seems less a supernatural thriller and more a tragic meditation on death. Damon's character is described as a "handsome, shy, soft-spoken" factory worker who can ... yes, indeed ... see dead people. Production on Hereafter is expected to begin this fall.
Meanwhile, Soderbergh confirmed that Damon is onboard for his next project, saying at the Deauville Film Festival that Damon has "accepted the challenge." Damon would most likely play the male lover of Liberace, the flamboyant musician whose stage and TV career spanned from the 1940s to his death in the late 1980s. The movie will apparently focus on a 1982 lawsuit, in which Damon's character revealed Liberace's homosexuality, shocking many around the world.
The untitled project already has Michael Douglas on board in the main role, and Soderbergh talked about his enthusiasm for Douglas' fit for the role.
We've already done some costume and wardrobe tests on Michael, and they're very, very, very good.... I swear to you, Michael amazed me. He crushed it.
Damon has starred in other projects by both directors. He can be seen in Soderbergh's The Informant!, now in theaters, and he is also featured in Eastwood's Invictus, which is due out in December. The latter movie stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Damon as Francois Pienaar, captain of South Africa's 1995 Rugby World Cup team. It tells the story of Mandela's attempts to use the rugby event to heal his country's reputation after years of apartheid and internal struggle.