Alessandro Nivola and Christopher Walken – Hollywood’s leading chef (chicken’n’pears a specialty) – are making Five Dollars A Day.
But, before you wonder why the duo haven’t sacked their agents – we mean, there are people working in sweatshops who earn more than that – you can relax, because it’s the title of a new movie about a father and son conman team, played by Walken and Nivola, respectively. So that’s ok, then.
Walken will play a grifter who is proud of his ability to live it up on no more than five dollars a day (or perhaps he writes for Empire – ba-dum dum tisch! Self-deprecation five!). Nivola – long one of the most under-rated actors out there – will play his more conservative son, who has previously done the time for one of Dad’s crimes. So presumably he’s at odds with Walken’s philosophy, which may or may not involve placing an upright chicken covered in pears into an oven for an hour or so.
We’ll keep an eye on this one, partially because of Nivola, partially because we’re suckers for conmen movies, but mostly because of Walken who has become so joyously unique that we’d clap and squeal in delight if he came into the Empire office and started plugging us all with an AK-47, as long as he was screaming death threats in those distinctive vocal patterns of his. The man is a legend, and we will see anything in which he features. Well, pretty much anything.
Shooting on the project will begin in September in New Jersey, with British director Nigel Cole (the guy behind Calendar Girls) calling the shots, from a script by Neal and Tippi Dobrofsky. Capitol Films greenlit the movie, presumably for more than five dollars a day.