Eastwood to Take on the FBI

Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood has found his next subject: legendary FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Eastwood is teaming with Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer ('A Beautiful Mind') to develop a biopic about Hoover, who helped co-found the FBI in 1935 and served as its head until his death in 1972. Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black ('Milk') will pen the script.

The film, which was originally being developed at Universal Studios, will mark a speedy return to the non-fiction genre for Eastwood, who recently captured Morgan Freeman's Oscar-nominated portrayal of Nelson Mandela in 2009's 'Invictus.'

But while that film focused on a single event in Mandela's long life, the Hoover biopic would presumably cover the FBI head's long and storied career, which included mafia manhunts in the '30s, persecution of suspected left wingers during the McCarthy era and his seemingly paranoid targeting of pop stars such as Elvis, John Lennon and James Brown at the end of his tenure.

Considering that, like Hoover himself, Eastwood was a strong supporter of Nixon at that time, we think Hoover would have approved of the choice of the director to tell his story. Then again, Hoover never saw 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.'

Eastwood's next project, 'Hereafter,' starring Matt Damon, is tentatively set to debut later this year.