But things — like Batman — happen.

Now it appears that filming dates are finally coming into focus for Live by Night, which is based on Dennis Lehane’s Edgar Award-winning novel of the same name. The Prohibition era story is the second of a trilogy about an Irish family in Boston.

Here’s the recent post from the Savannah Film Office that doesn’t mention Affleck:

IMDB lists a 2017 release date with Affleck as director, producer, co-writer, and one of the stars, alongside Zoe Saldana and Elle Fanning. The listing of crew indicates that filming will be in the Boston area and in Georgia.

I don’t really know if things like this are common in the film world, but the makers of Magic Mike XXL have participated in a thank you video that amounts to high praise of Savannah and the rest of coastal Georgia as a great place to make movies. The video was uploaded by the Georgia Film, Music, and Digital Entertainment Office.

“It turned out that Georgia had all the various looks that we wanted,” says director Steven Soderbergh, “and we settled on Savannah as a base of production.”

Check it out:

It seemed obvious a couple years ago (check out my posts from May 2013 and July 2013) that Ben Affleck was poised to direct and act in an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Edgar Award-winning Live by Night — and it certainly looked like much of the shooting would be done in Savannah and/or along the Georgia coast.

Of course, anything can happen in the movie business.

Now, it’s being widely reported — including in the Savannah Morning News — that Affleck is poised to make a movie on the Georgia coast. Some sources have not named the project, but The Brunswick News reports that it is indeed Live by Night.

It’s worth noting that reporting in fall 2014 linked Zoe Saldana, Elle Fanning, and Sienna Miller to Live by Night. According to the Internet Movie Database, the film is still slated for a 2016 release.

Affleck has other projects in the works, of course. He will star in a David Fincher remake of Strangers on a Train (the Hitchcock version and the Patricia Highsmith novel set a pretty high bar, honestly) and in The Accountant. But those are acting jobs, not directing ones, so it seems somewhat unlikely that Affleck would be looking for locations for those.

I have not read Lehane’s Live by Night but a couple of friends gave it strong reviews. According to Amazon, the story involves “one manâ€s rise from Boston petty thief to the Gulf Coastâ€s most successful rum runner.”

GA ATLANTA – PLAZA 2
GA CORDELE – CORDELE STADIUM 5 CINEMAS
GA GREENSBORO – PARKSIDE MAIN STADIUM 8
GA POOLER – ROYAL 13 W IMAX
GA ROSWELL – AURORA CINEPLEX 10
GA SAVANNAH – EISENHOWER CINEMA 6

Royal Cinemas in Pooler has its first screening at 2:15 p.m. on 12/25. There are four scheduled screenings per day through January 1.

Eisenhower Cinema 6 will have evening screenings on 12/25 and will also have the film for at least a week.

Here’s the trailer for the R-rated The Interview:

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water will be released in the U.S. on Feb. 6, 2015, but that trailer is already out.

I don’t know how I feel about the mix of animation styles, but, as I’ve said before, I love the bright, cheery beach town look of Broughton Street in some of those shots. The buildings and streetscapes were altered so much by painting and production design that they appear to have been changed little via special effects. So the whole movie seems a little more “realistic” than I expected, despite SpongeBob SquarePants and his compatriots romping around and apparently saving the world.

Last year, I posted a gallery of Broughton Street when it was decked out as the beach town Salty Shoals.

I’ll repost that gallery here:

Many of the scenes are in the heart of the Historic District and showcase tourist destinations, but there are some other beautiful locations too. It’s well worth your next two minutes:

Savannah – A Time Lapse from James Biscardi on Vimeo.

Midnight Rider subject Gregg Allman, a founding member of the iconic Southern rock group The Allman Brothers Band, is urging director Randall Miller not to proceed with production on the controversial biopic after the tragic death of camera assistant Sarah Jones.

Allman sent Miller a personal letter asking him to not move forward with the film amid reports that the director was looking to resume shooting in L.A.

“I am writing to you as one human being to another, and appealing to you from my heart,” Allman began. “I am asking you from a personal perspective not to go forward.”

This news come after star William Hurt dropped out of the project and after production was slated to move ahead in L.A.

It’s very difficult to imagine how this project could move ahead without Allman’s support, and even harder to imagine who would even go see the film given all the circumstances involved and given the amount of anger about Jones’ tragic, senseless death.

And there might be other obstacles to continued production. From the AJC’s Film accident exposes safety weaknesses on the set:

In coastal Georgia, prosecutors are weighing criminal charges in the death of a 27-year-old Atlanta woman struck by a train while filming a Greg Allman biopic in February. […]

Sheriffs†investigators in South Georgia last week turned over preliminary findings of their two-month probe. Several federal regulatory agencies are also looking into the accident and civil lawsuits are a certainty.

‘Midnight Rider†Suspends Production After Fatal Train Accident (EXCLUSIVE)

“Midnight Rider,” the Gregg Allman biopic on which a crew member was killed last week, has suspended production.

Crew members are being released, though theyâ€ve been told that they will be recalled at some future date.

Sarah Jones, the second camera assistant, was killed Thursday on the productionâ€s first day of shooting near Jessup, Georgia. The company was shooting a dream sequence on a railroad trestle, with a hospital bed on the tracks, when a train came across the bridge. Star William Hurt, director Randall Miller and the productionâ€s still photographer tried to get the bed off the tracks but did not have time.

This is the first mention in the press of star William Hurt having been on the scene of the tragic accident.

Variety also notes the possibility of criminal charges and the seeming likelihood of lawsuits. This could get ugly — or maybe I should say uglier.

Meanwhile, the new Slates for Sarah Facebook page has over 30,000 fans, and there’s a movement that has been gaining steam to have Sarah Jones included in the memorial tribute that is included at each year’s Academy Awards. Click here for the petition.

Here’s just one of many posts from that Slates for Sarah Facebook page: