Ready Player OnestarTye Sheridanis in talks to play the young lead oppositeBen AffleckinGeorge Clooney’s coming-of-age filmThe Tender Bar, Collider has exclusively learned.
Set up at Amazon Studios, the film is based onJ.R. Moehringer’s bestselling memoir, which recollected the time he spent searching for unlikely father figures among the patrons at his uncle’s bar in Long Island. Sheridan is making a deal to play Moehringer, while Affleck is set to play his Uncle Charlie.
It’s unclear whether Clooney plans to act in the film himself, but he has starred in every film he has directed with the exception ofSuburbicon, where he entrusted the lead to hisOcean’s 11palMatt Damon.
Oscar-winning scribeWilliam Monahan(The Departed) will adapt Moehringer’s memoir, and Clooney will produce the film with his Smokehouse partnerGrant Heslovas well as former Amazon execTed Hope. Amazon acquired the project out of turnaround from Sony, which had been developing the film withHidden FiguresdirectorTed Melfi.
Clooney’s latest film,The Midnight Sky, is a post-apocalyptic thriller in which he plays a lonely scientist in the Arctic who tries to stop a team of astronauts led byFelicity Jonesfrom returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe.
Sheridan is coming off of the innovative Quibi seriesWirelessfrom executive producerSteven Soderbergh(a longtime Clooney pal), and he’ll soon be seen alongsideOscar IsaacinPaul Schrader’s revenge thrillerThe Card Counter. Sheridan also stars oppositeColin Farrellin the upcoming sci-fi thrillerVoyagersfromDivergentdirectorNeil Burger, and he was recently cast inRupert Sanders’star-studded war movieThe Things They CarriedalongsideTom HardyandPete Davidson.
Sheridan made his professional acting debut in 2011’sThe Tree of Lifebefore going on to star alongsideMatthew McConaugheyinJeff Nichols' dramaMudandNicolas CageinDavid Gordon Green’s indie crime movieJoe. He was cast as Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, inX-Men: Apocalypsebefore landing the lead of Wade Watts inSteven Spielberg’s adaptation ofReady Player One.
Sheridan recently branched out into producing with the indie movieThe Night Clerk, which paired him withAna de Armas, and personally, I was a big fan of his performance inThe Stanford Prison Experiment. He’s represented by WME, Mosaic and attorney Mitch Smelkinson. For more onThe Card Counter, including the film’s poster,click here.
