In what shapes up as another very strong Cannes title for next week, Jake Gyllenhaal is set to produce and star as Leonard Bernstein in The American, with Cary Joji Fukunaga directing and producing. BRON Studios will produce and finance a film that begins principal photography in the fall. Sierra/Affinity will sell international territories and Endeavor Content is repping North American rights.
Michael Mitnick adapted the script from the Humphrey Burton biography Leonard Bernstein.
Structured in five movements, like a symphony, The American follows Bernstein from conducting the New York Philharmonic at the age of 25 and through a meteoric rise to fame, all while struggling both personally and publicly to be everything that everyone expected him to be, most of all himself.
