Sean Penn should be directing a movie called “All in the Family,” from the looks of this story.
But his movie is “Flag Day,” written by new Tony Award winner Jez Butterworth, and starring Penn’s two kids, daughter Dylan and son Hopper, with actress Robin Wright. Dylan plays the lead. Butterworth won the Tony for “The Ferryman.”
This is a lot of pressure to put on a young actress who’s never carried a movie or had a large part in one other than an indie four years ago that escaped everyone’s attention (“Condemned”). Also, in this case, the actress’s father is the director. (See “Prizzi’s Honor.”) But Dylan certainly has the genes for it, and Sean wouldn’t put this together unless he trusted his gut. But it can be tricky (see “Godfather III”). The good news is that Jon Kilik is the producer, and we trust him, don’t we? (We do!)
There’s an all star cast including Penn himself, along with Josh Brolin (No Country For Old Men, Milk, The Avengers franchise), two-time Tony Award winner Norbert Leo Butz (“Fosse/Verdon”, Fair Game), Dale Dickey (Hell or High Water, The Pledge), Eddie Marsan (Happy-Go-Lucky, 21 Grams), Bailey Noble (“True Blood”), Hopper Penn (War Machine), Miles Teller (Whiplash, Too Old To Die Young), and Katheryn Winnick (“Vikings”, The Dark Tower).
I’m actually surprised David Morse isn’t in the movie.
Flag Day is based on Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir “Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life.” The story centers around a daughter dealing with con man father. It sounds a little like “The Duke of Deception,” which should have been a major motion picture.
Funding is coming from Fernando Sulichin’s New Element Media, and from Ingenious Media. Sulichin has worked producing Oliver Stone movies and more recently Julian Schnabel’s “At Eternity’s Gate.” He was also executive producer of the ill-fated “London Fields,” one of the great disasters of all time.
