Glen Powell and Stephen Gaghan join forces for Heaven Can Wait remake

A remake of the 1978 comedy-drama Heaven Can Wait is in works under the film production and distribution company Paramount.

Script of the project will be penned by Oscar-winning writer Stephen Gaghan and will star Glen Powell in the lead.

The 1978 film, starring Warren Beatty, was written by him with Elaine May and he directed with Buck Henry. Heaven Can Wait follows a Los Angeles Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) accidentally taken away from his body by his guardian angel before he was meant to die, and comes back to life in the body of a recently murdered millionaire.

Heaven Can Wait was nominated for nine Oscars and went on to win one for the Best Art Direction category.

The 1978 film was an adaptation of Harry Segall's play of the same name, which was adapted over the years for films like Here Comes Mr Jordan in 1941, where the lead plays a boxer, and Chris Rock's Down To Earth in 2001, where Rock plays his real-life vocation of a comedian.

However, sources close to the project say the film is not going to be a remake, in its truest sense, of Beatty's film, but instead will feature the concept of a man passing away before his time to die.