Tommy Lee Jones Bows out of 'The Lincoln Lawyer'

Stage and screen award-winning star Tommy Lee Jones has quit The Lincoln Lawyer film project over creative differences with the script, Variety is reporting. Jones had been confirmed to direct and star in the film alongside Matthew McConaughey. Lakeshore Entertainment is producing the piece, an adaptation of the novel by Michael Connelly. 

Lakeshore is standing by the script, penned by John Romano, and intends to secure another director in time to begin production next spring. 

Like the novel, the film centers on a moderately successful criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller (McConaughey), who operates around the large area of Los Angeles county out of a Lincoln Town Car driven by a former client working off his legal fees.  The central case in the film involves a wealthy Los Angeles realtor who is accused of assault and attempted murder by a woman.

Tommy Lee Jones, best known for his big screen roles in blockbusters such as Batman Forever, The Fugitive, The Client, and Men in Black, has starred on Broadway in A Patriot for Me, Four on a Garden with Carol Channing and Sid Caesar, and Ulysses in Nighttown alongside Zero Mostel. He has performed in repertory theater alongside contemporaries such as John Lithgow, Stockard Channing and James Wood in Boston, in addition to Off-Broadway theaters throughout New York City. Currently, Jones is in post-production on HBO's "The Sunset Limited," based on the Cormac McCarthy play that Jones directed starring Samuel L. Jackson. He's also preparing an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "Islands in the Stream." Most recently, he finished filming the John Wells-directed "The Company Men" with Ben Affleck and Kevin Costner.