Ben Affleck is in talks to direct and star in action flick Line of Sight, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The project is intriguing because it is reportedly set to be filmed from a point of view similar to a first-person "shoot-em-up" video game.
With a screenplay by Peter O'Brien, who worked on the game Halo: Reach, Line of Sight centres on an elite commando squad which must transport a precious cargo while dealing with a global threat.
While sections of the film adaptation of the game Doom were shot from the first-person perspective, Line of Sight's borrowing from that ouvre would be unusual, particularly if the perspective is maintained throughout the film. The 1947 film noir Lady in the Lake, an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe detective novel, attempted to recreate the book's first-person narrative by use of point-of-view throughout the movie, but it was not a critical or commercial success for director and star Robert Montgomery. In recent times, Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly made extensive use of POV shots in order to depict the world of French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, following a stroke, could communicate using only an eyelid.
Meanwhile, Affleck began shooting Iran hostage-crisis drama Argo this week, about a CIA team masquerading as a sci-fi film crew in order to operate in 1979 Tehran. It's based on the real-life story of US operatives who, with help from Hollywood, used a fake movie project to smuggle six US diplomats out of the Iranian capital during the crisis. Argo was the name of the bogus movie. Affleck stars as CIA team leader Tony Mendez, alongside Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston and John Goodman.
