Author Dennis Lehane and his Boston homeboy Ben Affleck are teaming up again, this time for a film version of Lehane’s most recent novel, Live By Night. Affleck made his first major splash as a director by adapting Lehane’s novel Gone Baby Gone for the screen in 2007. Affleck has said Live By Night is his next project, which reportedly means he will write, produce, direct and star in the film.

There are a couple of strong local tie-ins. Lehane has been a Writer in Residence at Eckerd Colle for several years (he’s also a graduate). The author is part of the school’s Writers in Paradise 2013 conference, which concludes today, along with Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, State of Wonder) and Daniel Woodrell (Winter’s Bone), among other scribes.

A major portion of Live By Night takes place in Tampa, mostly Ybor City. The period piece, set amid 1920s Prohibition, revolves around rising criminal Joe Coughlin.

It will be interesting to see how much Affleck features Tampa, and whether he actually shoots in Ybor City. The novel is broken into two locales: Massachusetts, where Couglin starts his career in crime and does a prison stint; and Tampa, where he is sent to revive a syndicate’s control of the rum trade and other illegal activities.

There has been no word about casting—although it’s a fair guess that Affleck will play Coughlin (he’d fit)—and nothing about a shooting schedule.

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