Mean Business On North Ganson Street Updates: Is The Jamie Foxx Film Happening?

Is the movie version of Mean Business On North Ganson Street still moving forwards? S. Craig Zahler’s directorial debut was 2015’s Bone Tomahawk, starring Kurt Russell. This low-budget western/horror movie featured great performances and dialogue, alongside some truly shocking scenes of violence. Zahler soon followed up with Brawl In Cell Block 99, where Vince Vaughn’s main character is forced to literally fight his way into the titular cell block by crime bosses to save his wife and child.

Like Zahler’s debut Brawl In Cell Block 99 became a critical favorite for its mixture of quotable dialogue and outbursts of gory violence. His most recent film was Dragged Across Concrete, a near three-hour thriller where two corrupt cops attempt a heist on a gang of bank robbers that goes very, very wrong. While his first directorial effort may have only arrived in 2015, Zahler had many of his novels optioned in the years prior and worked on the screenplay for an adaption of anime Robotech, which was set to star Tobey Maguire.

Another of his novels Mean Business On North Ganson Street was once set to become a high-profile thriller, so what is the status of the project?

Mean Business On North Ganson Street Was Optioned In 2013

Deadline announced in a 2013 report that Mean Business On North Ganson Street had been acquired by Warner Brothers as a reunion for Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio. The latter was set to play Detective Jules Bettinger, who is demoted and relocated to a dead end city and partnered with Foxx’s cop as they investigate a brutal series of killings. S. Craig Zahler was also set to pen the adaptation of his book.

Zahler Offered A Mean Business On North Ganson Street Update In 2019

During an interview with HMV in 2019 S. Craig Zahler offered updates on two of his novels that had been optioned for movies. He revealed there was no progress on Mean Business On North Ganson Street, and that momentum on the project just kind of stopped dead while he was writing it. Ridley Scott’s anticipated adaptation of Zahler’s dark western Wraiths Of The Broken Land also appears to have stalled. The author revealed Drew Goddard (The Martian) had written the script but it doesn’t seem to be happening.

Mean Business On North Ganson Street Isn’t Happening

While Warner Bros might still have an option to produce Mean Business On North Ganson Street, the Foxx/DiCaprio version of the project is likely dead. There have been no updates on it in seven years and the book’s hard R subject matter doesn’t make it the most commercial prospect either. S. Craig Zahler also seems focused on turning his children’s novel Hug Chickenpenny: The Panegyric Of An Anomalous Child into his next movie, and doesn’t seem that broken up about Mean Business On North Ganson Street not moving ahead.

About The Author

Padraig Cotter
(3486 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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