Rooney Mara & Martin Sheen Dig Into Stephen Daldry’s ‘Trash’

Wow, we guess it really was 2011 that Stephen Daldry‘s “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” hit theaters (our review here), and while he’s been quiet on the cinematic front he’s still been very busy. Daldry was a producer for the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2012 Summer London Olympics but his next movie has been cooking up for a while. Way back in the spring of 2011 it was revealed that Daldry was going to direct an adaptation of Andy Mulligan‘s book “Trash,” with a script from Richard Curtis (“Love Actually,” “About Time“). And unlike most movies that sit around for a couple of years, this one has now started to press forward.

Rooney Mara, Martin Sheen and Wagner Moura are now on board the picture, with the wheels moving full speed and cameras slated to roll fairly soon. This does carry a whiff of being an Important Movie. The story concerns three street kids — Raphael, Gardo, and Rat (who will be by newcomers/unknowns Rickson Tevez, Eduardo Luis and Gabriel Weinstein — who have no homes, no parents, no money, and no education. They live in an unnamed third world country and survive by picking through a mostly human waste-filled garbage dump on the outskirts of a large city. One day, one of them finds a small leather bag with a wallet with some money and an ID card, a folded-up map, and a key. A police officer offers them a reward for this parcel but that makes them realize something’s amiss, and they decide to hang on to it. That decision puts them in danger and they’re soon on a mission, having to lie, steal and fight against corrupt forces in both the corporate world and the government.

Sounds like another potential “Slumdog Millionaire,” and it’s crude reading, but the potential is there. We’d guess the stars in the movie are really on the sidelines to the boys’ adventure, that will see them run into Father Julliard (Sheen) and an NGO worker named Olivia (Mara) along the way.

So count us a curious. Production starts next month in Rio De Janeiro and apparently it’s already slated for a May 2014 release from Universal, but something tells us that will change. [Deadline]