Ben Affleck, Matt Damon Reteam for Crime Thriller ‘Animals’ – The Hollywood Reporter

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are reteaming once again, this time for a new crime thriller that just landed at Netflix.

Affleck will direct Animals, which will star Damon. It could be shooting in Los Angeles by March, if all the pieces come together.

The secretive project was operating under several titles — The Animals of Los Angeles and Be Gentlemen — before landing on simply Animals.

Written by Connor McIntyre with revisions by Billy Ray, the crime thriller concerns a mayoral candidate and his wife whose son is kidnapped. Surrounded by plenty of enemies, political and otherwise, the husband and wife have no choice but to get their hands real dirty in order to save their son.

Affleck and Damon will produce via their Artists Equity along with the company’s Dani Bernfeld. Also producing are Brad Weston and Collin Creighton via their MakeReady banner. Fifth Season, the production, sales and distribution company formerly known as Endeavor Content, will also produce. The company developed the project in partnership with MakeReady.

Lifelong best friends and collaborators, Affleck and Damon have been working together for decades. Only in recent years, however, did they launch Artists Equity, their artist-led studio that seeks to financially reward all of a movie’s participants. Their first movie out of the gate was last year’s acclaimed drama, Air, the story of how Sonny Vaccaro changed the fortune of shoemaker Nike by signing a young Michael Jordan. Affleck directed the Amazon movie which Damon headlined.

On top of Air, Affleck’s previous directorial outtings include Oscar best picture winner Argo and the well-regarded ensemble crime thriller The Town, among several other movies.

Damon has a key part of the Manhattan Project in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and will be seen in Ethan Coen’s lesbian road movie comedy Drive-Away Dolls, which Focus Features opens Feb. 23.

The two are repped by WME and Ziffren Brittenham.