Channing Tatum’s ‘Roofman’ sparks real-life reunions

Channing Tatum’s new heartfelt crime caper “Roofman” — which dropped in October — has helped to mend relationships for a real-life conman.

Director Derek Cianfrance — who spent years speaking with crook Jeffrey Manchester,
who robbed a number of McDonald’s before escaping prison and living in a Toys R’ Us while on the lam — revealed during a recent Paramount screening that the film has had a profound impact on Manchester’s fractured family.

“In the time since the movie has come out in the last month, just two days ago, I spoke with his daughter for about two hours,” Cianfrance revealed. “She’s been in contact, she’s talked to Jeff six times . . . So in some ways, the movie has had this effect of connecting them again, you know, because he hadn’t talked to her for, I think, 15 years.”

Cianfrance said that Manchester’s sister has also reconnected with him. 

“Jeff called me a couple weeks ago, and he said, ‘Derek, if I could give you a hug, I would’,” he said. ” “He was like, ‘I called my sister, and she answered, and we talked for a half hour,’ and he said ‘It was like we were in high school together again.”  

Before the movie was even in motion, Cianfrance spent four and a half years talking with the imprisoned burglar.

“At the peak of my relationship with him, he was calling me about four times a week,” Cianfrance said. “It was clear to me that he was just such a family man. . . His desire was to try to make this perfect home for his kids, and he couldn’t figure out a way to do it . . .He just kind of got mixed up in the ways in which to be a dad, I think. He thought he conflated being a provider with being, you know, someone who provides things, not their time.” 

The movie tracks Manchester’s time after his prison break, when he holed up in a Toys R’ Us in North Carolina and wound up striking up a romantic relationship with one of the employees, a newly divorced mom with two kids.

Casting director Bonnie Timmermann was also at the screening for the flick, which also stars Kirtsen Dunst, Juno Temple, Peter Dinklage and LaKeith Stanfield.

Along with A-list talents, the film also cast the real people involved in the saga including several police officer’s who helped capture Manchester.