Andy Garcia Returns to the Director’s Chair, Uniting Brendan Fraser, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, and More for Diamond

Andy Garcia is stepping back behind the camera for the first time in a long while. The Untouchables and The Godfather Part III star is directing a contemporary noir called Diamond, and he is also writing and producing it. It is his first directing gig in about 15 years; the last time he directed was TV work in 2007 on George Lopez and Cold Case. Yes, the math is a little fuzzy, but the point stands: it has been a minute.

The project is stacked with names. Garcia has pulled together the kind of ensemble that makes you double-take at the call sheet:

• Brendan Fraser (The Mummy, The Whale, Batgirl)
• Rosemarie DeWitt (Rachel Getting Married, Poltergeist, La La Land)
• Bill Murray (Ghostbusters, Lost in Translation, Groundhog Day)
• Dustin Hoffman (Hook, Tootsie, Rain Man)
• Demian Bichir (A Better Life, The Hateful Eight)
• Danny Huston (21 Grams, The Aviator, The Constant Gardener)
• LaTanya Richardson Jackson (The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey)
• Yul Vazquez (Severance, Hotel Cocaine, The Lost Bus)
• Robert Patrick (Peacemaker, Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
• Rachel Ticotin (Total Recall, Falling Down, Con Air)

Garcia told Deadline he has been nursing this story for close to 15 years, which tracks with how long indie projects often take to find the right window. He sounds genuinely relieved and a little mystical about the timing and the cast landing all at once. He also name-checks the title character, Joe Diamond, to hint at the film’s headspace:

"Dreams are a way of escaping your reality, unless those dreams are your reality"

Quick sidebar while we are on Garcia: he recently played a crime boss in the character-driven thriller Eenie Meanie alongside Samara Weaving and Karl Glusman. The setup is lean and mean: a reformed teenage getaway driver (Weaving) gets yanked back into her old life when her former employer (Garcia) dangles a shot at saving her chronically unreliable ex (Glusman). I really liked this one — Weaving hits a career-best, the story swerves in smart, emotional ways, and the ending lingers.