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Crowe Flies to Director's Chair

Thu., Mar. 22, 2007 3:27 PM PDT by Josh Grossberg

Russell Crowe is looking to unleash hell behind the camera.

The Gladiator star plans to make his feature helming debut on Bra Boys, a surf gang drama set in Australia. Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment will coproduce the project.

According to Variety, the film will be based on a recent documentary by the same name that chronicles the exploits of three brothers, Sunny, Koby and Jai Abberton, the founders of the Bra Boys counterculture surf community in the Sydney beachside suburb of Maroubra. Members of the surf gang are known not only for making waves in professional big surf contests but also for their notoriously hard-partying ways and run-ins with authorities.

Crowe served as narrator on the documentary, which was codirected by Sunny Abberton and Macaria De Souza, and released last month Down Under.

Like the surf tale that inspired it, the Oscar winner's feature film version will tackle the good, the bad and the grungy of the Abbertons and their rebel Endless Summer ilk, while focusing on their struggles as a youth movement. The script will be written by Collateral scribe Stuart Beattie.

For Crowe, the project marks yet another reunion for the actor, Universal and Imagine chief Brian Grazer. The parties previously collaborated on 2001's Best Picture winner A Beautiful Mind and 2005's Cinderella Man, both directed by Ron Howard, and American Gangster, which recently wrapped shooting in New York and is due out in November.

Last month, Crowe and Grazer announced they would join forces yet again for Nottingham, an inverted take on the legend of Robin Hood. The thesp portrays the Sheriff of Nottingham, as the good guy investigating a series of murders committed by the English folk hero.

As of yet, there's no word on a shoot date or whether Crowe will take a role in Bra Boys. However, the New Zealand native will be quite busy on the big screen over the next couple of years before he assumes the director's chair.

Aside from American Gangster, a crime drama about heroin smugglers in 1970s Harlem, which reteams him with Gladiator director Ridley Scott and his Virtuosity costar Denzel Washington, Crowe is also starring in the upcoming drama Tenderness, along with Laura Dern, as well as in the western 3:10 to Yuma, opposite Christian Bale and Peter Fonda.

When he's not focusing on his film career, the Beautiful Mind actor has been moonlighting as a businessman. Last March, Crowe bought a 75 percent stake in a national rugby team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. Showing how seriously he's been taking his new role as owner, he fired his squad's cheerleaders last month, after fielding complaints that the women's skimpy outfits left fans of both sexes feeling uncomfortable.