This one must have slipped under the door before the WGA strike.

I’ve been lazy blogging about the writers’ strike this week, primarily because reading all of the news about it has alternately transfixed and depressed me into near silence. As a former failed screenwriter myself, I’m entirely sympathetic to the efforts and concerns of the writers – definitely more so than any other faction involved. At the same time, however, when I read stories such as the one in which The Shield creator Shawn Ryan describes how he won’t be working on his career-making show’s final episode, the fan in me dies a little. To think that we’ll soon be facing a wasteland of reality show and rerun TV viewing, as well as the inevitable glut of unwatchable movies – and all over issues of control, power and greed – well, it’s just got me feeling a bit bummed.

And this kind of news item really doesn’t help.

Word comes out of the Hollywood Reporter that Bill Bob Thornton has been attached to an upcoming DreamWorks-produced thriller called Eagle Eye. The movie will also star Rosario Dawson, Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan and Anthony Mackie. Here’s the movie’s logline – verbatim – from the Reporter:

The story revolves around a young man (LaBeouf) and a single mother (Monaghan) who are framed as terrorists and forced to become members of a cell with plans to carry out a political assassination. Thornton will play a patriotic hero who works with the government to do the right thing. Mackie will play a hot-shot soldier who helps save the day. Dawson plays a government agent.

Honestly, I saw this blurb at the excellent FilmDrunk.com and thought that it was a joke. A “patriotic hero who works with the government to do the right thing”? “Hot-shot soldier who helps save the day”? This sounds a little bit like something my four-year-old son Sonny Corleone might have come up with, but it turns out that the “latest draft” is being worked on by Hilary Seitz (Insomnia). The article also mentions that the project is being overseen by the screenwriters of Transformers.

Yep. Now I’m feeling even worse, thanks.

photo credit: slackmistress via flickr