Michael B. Jordan‘s remake of The Thomas Crown Affair has its leading lady. Taylor Russell is set to follow in the footsteps of Faye Dunaway and Rene Russo in the Amazon MGM Studios remake. Deadline reports that Russell was chosen after an extensive casting search.

Jordan is set to write and direct the remake; it will be his sophomore directorial effort after helming Creed III in 2023. The Thomas Crown Affair will be one of Russell‘s highest-profile roles to date. The Canadian actor first broke out in the Netflix remake of Lost in Space, and subsequently had prominent roles in the drama Waves and the horror film Escape Room. She earned rave reviews in 2022 for her role in the cannibal road movie Bones and All opposite Timothée Chalamet. She recently starred in the dramedy Mother, Couch, and can next be seen in Na Hong-jin‘s science fiction thriller Hope, opposite Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender.

What Is ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ About?

Released in 1968 and directed by the great Norman Jewison, The Thomas Crown Affair stars Steve McQueen as the titular Thomas Crown, a millionaire sportsman and adrenaline junkie who masterminds elaborate bank robberies simply to stave off boredom. After a massive heist in Boston, insurance investigator Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway) figures out that Crown is the culprit, but before she can bring him in, they fall in love, instead. However, Crown has another heist planned, leaving Vicki profoundly conflicted. The movie was a box office hit, and won an Academy Award for its iconic theme tune, “The Windmills of Your Mind.” Die Hard‘s John McTiernan remade the movie in 1999, with then-Bond Pierce Brosnan as Crown and Rene Russo as insurance investigator Catherine Banning. Here, Crown is reimagined as an art thief, but like McQueen‘s Crown, he too falls in love with his pursuer. It also stars Denis Leary and Ben Gazzara; Faye Dunaway cameos as a psychiatrist. Like the original, it was also a financial success, making $124.3 million USD against a $48 million budget.

The remake of The Thomas Crown Affair will be written by Drew Pearce (The Fall Guy); a previous draft was written by Wes Tooke (Midway) and Justin Britt-Gibson (The Strain). It will be produced by Patrick McCormick and Marc Toberoff, and executive produced by Alan Trustman, who wrote the 1968 original.

The Thomas Crown Affair is in development, and is slated to film in London this summer; no release date has yet been announced.

via Collider