Director Lee Daniels delivers The Paperboy with Matthew Mcconaughey, Tobey Maguire, Sofia Vergara, Zac Efron for Millennium Film

Cannes - Oscar nominee Lee Daniels will direct Matthew McConaughey, Tobey Maguire, Sofia Vergara and Zac Efron in Millennium Films’ production of The Paperboy, an erotic thriller based on the Peter Dexter novel of the same name, it was announced at the 64th Festival de Cannes by Nu Image/Millennium Films principal and executive producer Avi Lerner.

Daniels will do double duty as producer, along with Hilary Shor (Children of Men, Eye of the Beholder), and script writer. He is working on a script that Pedro Almodóvar and Dexter developed based on Dexter’s novel. The film’s executive producers are Lerner, Trevor Short, Danny Dimbort and Cassian Elwes. Nu Image, Inc. will be selling foreign on the film in Cannes, with CAA and Elwes representing the picture domestically.

“This is a good film for Nu Image and Millennium, a project set in the steamy South, directed by Lee Daniels with Hilary Shor producing, and the incredible cast of Matthew, Tobey, Sofia and Zac is pure gold,” comments Lerner.

The Paperboy is the story of an idealistic Miami Times reporter Ward James who returns to his hometown in Florida to investigate the possibly unlawful imprisonment of a death row inmate. The turn of events will rock his world in this film that has been described as Chinatown meets Body Heat.