Woody Harrelson to become LBJ for director Rob Reiner

It wasn't too long ago when we saw President Lyndon B. Johnson grace the screen in Selma, embodied by Tom Wilkinson, and it won't be much longer until we see him return to the medium. In addition to Bryan Cranston reprising the figure in HBO's upcoming play adaptation All the Way, director Rob Reiner has the pieces in formation for his long-developed LBJ biopic, with Woody Harrelson to play the 36th president.

While the director kicked around the project for years, decades even, this is the first time the project's picked up steam. As Showbiz 411 reports, he works under the 2014 Black List screenplay LBJ written by Project Runaway pen Joey Hartstone, and in the movie he'll look at how the powerful Senate Majority Leader went from Vice President into the primary chair following JFK's assassination. That's a lot of ground to cover, and based on Reiner's recent track record as a director, it doesn't look like he really has it in him to pull this off anymore.

But for once this is a passion project, and hopefully there's actually some sort of invigoration in the eventual movie for the first time in Reiner's career behind the camera since the '90s. God knows he still got it in front of the camera, as evident from his recent performances in The Wolf of Wall Street and his guest turns on Happyish, and hopefully somewhere buried inside that bearded head is the spunk to propel himself equally behind the camera again. Hopefully he can pull it off.

In addition to signing in Harrelson for the primary role, Reiner also currently looks for actors to play Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Ted Sorenson and Jackie Kennedy in the movie. Time is of the essence, however, for that aforementioned Cranston biopic soon starts production under Jay Roach (Game Change). Wilkinson's portrayal of LBJ was fairly controversial, with some complaining it was partially villainous take on the former president. Chances are Reiner's movie won't suffer from the same fate, and if anything the question is whether or not he'll be too sweet. Beyond Hartstone's screenplay, at one point in 1997 Reiner said he would use Robert Caro's biography Means of Ascent as inspiration. Though it's not clear now whether this book is still used to make his latest, let alone what other books may serve to guide the biopic.

There's also no word yet on when this production starts. But in the meantime, Reiner wraps up post-production on his other recent directorial project Being Charlie, starring Nick Robinson (Jurassic World) and Common. It's slated to come out sometime this December.

As for Harrelson, he also a commitment to two to perform before his presidential run. True, he's not in this latest season of True Detective. But he does soon star in Craig Johnson's Wilson, starting production soon in Minnesota. He also has By the Way of Helena and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2 scheduled for release later this year, as well as Triple 9 and Now You See Me: The Second Act for the next.

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