I count myself as a fan of Michael Winterbottom, and it’s only the trust I have in the director that keeps me from thinking his adaptation of Jim Thompson’s classic The Killer Inside Me is the most woefully miscast movie of the millenium. To put it in clearer terms: there was already a movie made from this book, where Stacy Keach plays the titular guy with a killer inside him. In the new movie, it’s Casey Affleck.

What?!? It’s nuts. But it’s Winterbottom, so I trust him. In Thompson’s book Luke Ford is a small town deputy sheriff who everybody thinks is sort of boring and maybe a little dumb. But in reality he’s a sociopath who is racking up the bodies, and killing more people in an effort to frame someone else for the murders. It’s a great book, one that I haven’t revisited in years. Maybe now is the time.

Especially as more casting keeps happening. Besides Affleck, Jessica Alba has been cast as a prostitute, while Kate Hudson will be playing Luke Ford’s schoolteacher sweetheart. Now the latest bit of news: The Mentalist star Simon Baker has been added as an attorney on the trail of the bodies. I know nothing about Simon Baker, and I don’t remember the book well enough to recall this character. So no opinion!

The Killer Inside Me is shooting now in Oklahoma.

via Hollywood Reporter