Paramount Pulls In Alexander Payne’s ‘Downsizing’ With Matt Damon, Reese Witherspoon
Alexander Payne is heading back to Nebraska and to Paramount for his next film, Downsizing. The project was previously set up at Fox and the project (and trio) was reported exclusively by Deadline several months ago here. In what marks the third collaboration with the studio, Payne, Matt Damon and Reese Witherspoon will pull together to do the story about an Omaha man who joins the throngs of people undergoing a new process that reduces them to a tiny fraction of their size. What? Yeah, that’s the logline. The guy then moves to one of the many communities of small people that are sprouting up around the world. Social satire.
The film will be produced by Payne and Mark Johnson and will begin production in the spring of 2016. The studio is looking for a fourth quarter, 2017 release.
The project was scripted by Payne with Jim Taylor, with whom Payne shared the Adapted Screenplay Oscar with for Sideways and collaborated on About Schmidt. This repairs Payne with Witherspoon’ who starred as a prissy but ferociously ambitious student set on winning a high school office to the dismay of teacher Matthew Broderick in the satire Election.
Payne and Witherspoon are represented by CAA. Damon is represented by WME.
– Deadline