Fresh off a collaboration on Oppenheimer, Matt Damon will reteam with Casey Affleck for a new heist movie written by Affleck. The movie, a buddy comedy inspired by movies like Midnight Run and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, will be in theaters this summer, and will be directed by Damon’s The Bourne Identity collaborator Doug Liman. Liman, for his pat, has gone the action-comedy route a few times in his distinguished career, notably in 1999’s Go. Damon, of course, became a household name after appearing in Good Will Hunting, a movie he wrote with Affleck’s brother, Oscar winner Ben Affleck.
Affleck said that he always wanted to be in a buddy comedy, and when those kinds of roles weren’t coming his way, he figured he would take Ben and Matt’s example to heart and just write a part for himself. Liman, for his part, says it’s great to return to working with Damon and see how he has grown as an actor and a collaborator.
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“I was parachuted into a family,” Liman said. “With Bourne, I was inviting Matt into my world. But with Instigators, I was very clear being dropped into Matt’s family. And all that history, good and bad, is on the screen.”
Last year, Damon returned to working with Ben Affleck, working with him on Air, a biopic of Nike executive Phil Knight.
“The Instigators is about two strangers who are hired for a heist,” Affleck told EW. “They become frenemies and then become friends while Jack Harlow yells at us, Paul Walter Hauser insults us, Ving Rhames hunts us, and Hong Chau keeps us alive.”
You can see a preview image below.
And here’s the official synopsis for the film:
Matt Damon stars as Rory, a desperate father who reluctantly joins forces with Cobby (Affleck), an ex-con, to pull off a robbery of the ill-gained earnings of a corrupt politician. When things go to hell, the pair find themselves engulfed in a whirlwind of chaos, pursued not only by the police but also backward bureaucrats and vengeful crime bosses.
And since EW is paraphrasing the official synopsis, we aren’t totally sure how it gets to this next bit, but “Along the way, they somehow convince Rory’s therapist (Hong Chau) to join their ‘riotous getaway.’”
The Instigators will arrive in select theaters on August 2, before streaming on Apple TV+ on August 9.
