Michael Keaton article

He talks a little about American Assassin in this interview

It’s true that he now has his pick of plumb projects, including an upcoming turn as a super villain (now familiar territory) in Marvel’s Spiderman: Homecoming, and as a Cold War veteran in the big screen adaptation of Vince Flynn’s bestselling series, American Assassin.

While he refers to the former as a “big budget movie that will be an awful lot of fun,” the latter seems to have hit a few snags. Still, Keaton is confident that the end result is going to be awesome. “American Assassin needed a reshape. Not that it was bad, but the tone of the movie needed to change. The director [Michael Cuesta] is doing that with the writer [Stephen Schiff ] with a bunch of notes from me. I hadn’t actually done that before, but I didn’t want to do it as it was written. By the way, this wasn’t just me, it was everyone involved: we didn’t think it was there yet.”

His character, Stan Hurley, is a mentor to the young assassin, played by The Maze Runner star Dylan O’Brien. Although this type of character was new for him, Keaton was up to the challenge for one very significant reason: “I’m going to be really honest—this [movie] has potential for international appeal. I run a business in a sense, and you have to go international as long as you can, because that’s what keeps the movie business going.”