Variety came out today with news that Ridley Scott has just cast Casey Affleck in the new Warner Brothers film The Kind One, based on a novel by Tom Epperson. Affleck (the younger) who most recently played the part of Patrick Kenzie in his brother's directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, will star as an amnesiac living in 1930s Los Angeles who finds himself working for a mobster and falling in love with the baddie's girl. I did a cursory ancestry.com check and found no familial ties between the director and his lead, so it appears as though Affleck, who's best known as a Hey! It's that Guy in Good Will Hunting and the Ocean's films, scored the part without the help of nepotism. (To be fair, he did win critical acclaim and an Oscar nod for his part in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, though no word is out yet on the involvement of Damon/Affleck (the elder) friend, Brad Pitt.)

Scott, a three time Oscar nominee, who was a producer on The Assassination of Jesse James... had not yet at press time decided whether or not the period noir drama would be an entertaining commercial success (Gladiator, American Gangster) or a self-indulgent therapy session (A Good Year). Being that noir dramas have been Oscar-bait in the last decade, we can all hope it's the former. Similarly, theater workers who still have to manually put up marquees, are just hoping that the name doesn't get any longer like the duo's last joint project.

Tags: casey affleck, ridley scott, the kind one, tom epperson, variety