Gerard Butler is a Law Abiding Citizen

Frank Darabont (pictured, left) can’t seem to stay out of prison. After prison tales “Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile”, you’d think the man would realize prison is a place he’d like to steer clear off. Not so much, because Darabont is scheduled to return to prison in August of this year to make “Law Abiding Citizen”, a thriller starring Gerard Butler (pictured, below) as a city official who must stop an incarcerated criminal mastermind who, despite his situation, still runs the city beyond the walls of his jail cell. Who says prison stifles one’s ambitions?

Screen Daily has the breakdown:

Production is set to begin on August 18 in Detroit on the low-$40m range story of a criminal mastermind who controls a city from the confines of his prison cell. Butler will play the prosecutor who stands in his way.

But Variety, in their write-up for the film a few months back, has more of a twist to the storyline:

Their first project is the psychological thriller “Law Abiding Citizen,” which the duo are producing for Mark Gill, Neil Sacker and Robert Katz’s the Film Department.

Butler will star as a successful assistant D.A. who finds himself at the center of a vigilante plot hatched by a traumatized victim of the legal system.

So did they excised the vigilante plot, or is it still a part of the movie? And could the rumored casting of Catherine Zeta-Jones have anything to do with it?

Kurt Wimmer (”Equilibrium”) wrote the script along with Lucas Foster (”Mr. and Mrs. Smith”). This will be Darabont’s first film after the Thomas Jane horror flick “The Mist”.