It looks like Jeremy Allen White will be taking a brief break from his (admittedly idyllic) life of shopping for flowers, going on long walks with Rosalía, and shutting down the internet with his Calvin Klein ads for a very important reason: well, firstly, he needs to complete work on the third and fourth seasons of The Bear—which are, to the delight of fans, being filmed back-to-back—but, after that, he seems poised to take on an even more high-profile and challenging role: that of music legend Bruce Springsteen.
On March 26, Deadline reported that the Emmy, Golden Globe, SAG, and Critics’ Choice Award winner was in talks to play The Boss in a new film, titled Deliver Me From Nowhere, about the making of the Oscar winner and 20-time Grammy recipient’s 1982 album Nebraska. The musician was battling with depression when he penned the seminal record—which featured the songs “Atlantic City,” “Johnny 99,” and “Highway Patrolman,” alongside the title track—pouring his complicated emotions into what is now remembered as his most raw, and to some his best, collection of tracks.
In the process of dealing with his newfound fame following the success of Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and The River, Springsteen recorded the new songs with a simple four-track recorder alone in the bedroom of a house he was renting in New Jersey, originally not intending to turn it into an album. It was met with critical acclaim and paved the way for his next release, the era-defining Born in the USA. Springsteen himself is actively involved in the forthcoming project, and the film is set to adapt Warren Zanes’s 2023 book about the period, Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska.’
White, it has to be said, feels like perfect casting—in some photos of Springsteen performing in the early ’80s, the actor is his spitting image, and, more importantly, he’s proven his ability to play tortured overachievers in not only The Bear, but also 2023’s The Iron Claw. The latter was, of course, an A24 production, and the studio is circling this release too, with Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Hostiles) in place to write and direct.