What is a David Gordon Green film? The answer to this question has perplexed film scholars for years now: he began his career with the dreamy lyricism of tone poems George Washington and All the Real Girls, took a detour into stoner comedy with Your Highness and Pineapple Express, returned to difficult character studies for Prince Avalanche and Joe (or as I like to call it, Irrefutable Evidence That Nicolas Cage Is Still a Good Actor), then whipped up a studio-sized flop in haywire political satire Our Brand Is Crisis. Soon he’ll remake Halloween with frequent collaborator Danny McBride, seemingly just for kicks. Predicting his next move is all but impossible, so this week brings the official news of what he’ll do next — and prepare yourself, because it just as incongruous with the rest of his scattered filmography as you’d expect.

Deadline reports that for his next feature project Green will team with Jake Gyllenhaal to implicitly stick it to Mark Wahlberg with Stronger, a second film dramatizing the events of the Boston Marathon bombing. While Wahlberg’s Patriots Day went the police-procedural route, casting Massachusetts’ favorite son as a valiant cop (pronounced kawp) who gets to say things like “We gotta catch these guys,” Gyllenhaal will take a slightly less rah-rah role as real-life survivor Jeff Bauman. The Bostonian was at the finish line waiting to watch his girlfriend complete the marathon when an explosive detonated and caused massive trauma. Even in a state of serious injury, Bauman was still able to draw on a brief moment’s glimpse of the responsible parties to aid the police in their manhunt. Ultimately, his contributions to the investigation helped resolve the frightening situation for everyone. (Bauman and his girlfriend, who will be portrayed by Tatiana Maslany in the film, married after the marathon but recently split. Who knows if the script will gloss over that.)

The film has been scheduled for a release on September 22, at which point Hollywood’s latest similar-project showdown will be decided. Will Stronger be the Finding Nemo to Patriots Day’s Shark Tale? Or will it be shunted into the Deep Impact position, with its rival the Armageddon? Only time will tell who shall emerge as A Bug’s Life, and who shall be lost to history as the Antz.

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