Glen Powell to star in Heaven Can Wait reimagining with Stephen Gaghan penning the screenplay

Chalk up another project for Glen Powell. Recently, the Hit Man star was announced to be in talks for the new unknown J.J. Abrams project. He was also announced to star in the thriller Huntington, which puts him alongside Margaret Qualley and Ed Harris, as well as joining Anthony Mackie and Laura Dern for the legal drama titled Monsanto. The Hollywood Reporter has now revealed that Powell is now set to star in a reimagining of Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait for Paramount. Stephen Gaghan, who won an Academy Award for his script for Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 crime film Traffic, has been tapped to pen the screenplay for this update.

The 1978 Warren Beatty film was based on Harry Segall’s play of the same name and garnered nominations for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture; however, the movie would only post a win for Best Art Direction. In the original, it saw Beatty as an NFL quarterback who dies prematurely due to an antsy angel, so he returns to Earth in the body of a recently murdered millionaire. Beatty had directed the film with Buck Henry and co-wrote the script with Elaine May. The play was also adapted into the 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan, where the main character was a boxer and then reimagined for a Chris Rock comedy in 2001 called Down to Earth. This new film with Powell will not feature him as a football player, but the film’s premise will remain intact.

Powell can be seen in a couple of new projects this year with Netflix’s Hit Man from Richard Linklater and the Lee Issac Chung movie Twisters. Recently, Powell spoke about the experience of working on Twisters and how he was able to bring his own history with a tornado encounter to the film, “It’s actually something I got to incorporate a little bit into the movie,” Powell said. “I had an experience with this tornado in Jarrell, Texas. It was an F5 – one of the big ones. It decimated Jarrell. I was outrunning it with my aunt Taffy, and a car full of cousins. And I remember us having to take shelter. It didn’t get close enough to do any damage to us, but I remember the fear of being on the road when, you know, the biggest imaginable one was kind of coming through.“