Michael Fassbender to Play “Macbeth” in Shakespearean Classic

April 29, 2013 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 2 Comments

All those intriguing projects being put together to go out to buyers at Cannes are starting to make themselves known, and here’s one of the most intriguing. Screen Daily reports Michael Fassbender is attached to play the titular role in a big screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy “Macbeth” for fast rising Australian director Justin Kurzel.

The film is expected to shoot later this year with Fassbender in the role of the ambitious Scottish army captain who resorts to regicide in order to steal the crown, plunging the rest of his life into turmoil and regret, and leading his country into civil war. Lady Macbeth, long considered one of the best and most complex Shakespearean villains, is being cast and talks are underway with “at least one Hollywood leading actress.” My vote unequivocally goes to Jessica Chastain, who would nail this role, but of course there are plenty of other worthy choices as well.

Fassbender is currently reprising his role as Magneto in “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and is already attached to another literary role, that of novelist Thomas Wolfe in biopic “Genius.” He has wrapped up shooting on Steve McQueen’s “Twelve Years a Slave” as well as Terrence Malick’s untitled Texas-set romantic drama with Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara.

Zoe Kravitz and Ansel Elgort Join Shailene Woodley in “Divergent”

March 11, 2013 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 1 Comment

Rising stars Zoe Kravitz and Ansel Elgort, along with CW series “Nikita” star Maggie Q have joined Shailene Woodley in the adaptation of YA novel “Divergent”, according to THR. But no, none of them are playing male lead Four, who filmmakers are apparently having a lot of trouble locking down.

In the Neil Burger directed adaptation, Woodley plays Tris Prior, whose futuristic dystopic world is one in which society is divided into factions (Dauntless, Abnegation, Amity, Candor, and Erudite), and each person is sorted into each faction based on a personality test that determines their dominant character traits. Born into the selfless faction Abnegation, Tris shocks her family when she opts to join Dauntless, the brave, instead. There she meets Four, a fellow Abnegation defector who has now taken on a leadership role in their new faction. Elgort will play Tris’ twin brother, who also defects from Abnegation to join Erudite. Kravitz will play Christina, a fellow Dauntless member who befriends Tris, while Q will play Tori, a Dauntless tattoo artist who knows more about their shady divided society than most. Shooting is scheduled to begin in April in Chicago, where the novel is set. The article does not mention Kate Winslet, who entered talks to play an unspecified role a couple of months ago but still has not been confirmed.

Kravitz, daughter of Lenny Kravitz, played a mutant in “X-Men: First Class” but does not appear to be returning for the sequel. She headlined indie “Yelling to the Sky” and recently wrapped up filming on “Mad Max: Fury Road” opposite Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. She’ll next be seen opposite Will and Jaden Smith in M. Night Shyamalan’s intergalactic family actioner “After Earth.”

Elgort made his feature film debut in Kimberly Pierce’s remake of “Carrie” starring Chloe Moretz and before that acted in the Off-Broadway drama “Regrets.”

“The Intouchables” Star Omar Sy Joins “X-Men: Days of Future Past”

March 2, 2013 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 1 Comment

omar-sy Director Bryan Singer has taken to Twitter to announce even more cast additions to sequel “X-Men: Days of Future Past” which, frankly, feels a bit crowded already. Today it’s French actor Omar Sy, who recently broke out in international hit “The Intouchables”, who has come on board the comic book adaptation in an unspecified role.

Thus far only Sy and “Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage are fresh faces to the mutant franchise, while the rest of the cast will be a mix of Singer’s original 2000s’ “X-Men” trilogy – Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Ellen page, Shawn Ashmore and Anna Paquin – and last year’s prequel “X-Men: First Class” – Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult and James McAvoy. The two disparate time periods these characters inhabit will be traversed with a time travel storyline that’s one of the most iconic from the Marvel comics which should put Page’s Shadowcat character front and center. The film is scheduled for release on July 18, 2014 and filming will begin soon.

Sy, who has been steadily acting in his native France for a decade, moved to Los Angeles last year but will continue to make French movies. He is attached to culinary comedy “Chef” opposite Bradley Cooper as well as “Chocolat”, a biopic of Rafael Padilla, “a former slave born in Cuba who became the first black artist in France during the Belle Epoque era” which will film in early 2014. He’ll next be seen in Michel Gondry’s “Mood Indigo.”

Nicholas Hoult to star in Rupert Wyatt’s “Birdsong”

February 8, 2013 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting Leave a comment

nicholas-hoult Rupert Wyatt has found the leading man of his big screen adaptation of Sebastian Falkes’ wartime romantic epic “Birdsong”, according to Variety, and it’s someone who has a lot of heat at the moment..

“Nicholas Hoult is the holy grail in my search for Stephen,” Wyatt says, referring to lead character Stephen Wraysford, a 21-year old British soldier who falls for a married French woman in the midst of World War I. Their ill-fated love affair has lasting effects and the story spans three generations after their initial separation. A BBC miniseries adaptation of the story recently aired with Eddie Redmayne in the role of Wraysford and Clemence Posey as Isabelle, the woman he loves. This has long been a passion project for Wyatt, who finds himself with more industry clout after successfully ushering in prequel “The Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”

Hoult can currently be seen as the lead of surprise zombie rom com “Warm Bodies” opposite Teresa Palmer. You may also remember him as the little boy from “About a Boy” or as Tony on UK teen series “Skins.” He’s currently filming futuristic thriller “Young Ones” opposite Michael Shannon and Elle Fanning and will then transition to reprise his role as Beast in “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”

Lucas Till, Jeremy Irvine and Alex Pettyfer vying for “Divergent” male lead opposite Shailene Woodley

January 8, 2013 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 7 Comments

Shailene Woodley is still searching for her Four. Two months after she tested opposite a quartet of young leading men, director Neil Burger and the filmmakers behind “Divergent” are still looking for the perfect male lead. Variety reports today that a trio of guys will test opposite Woodley later this week, and the contenders are Lucas Till, Jeremy Irvine and Alex Pettyfer.

Till is the only holdver from the guys who tested in November, so it seems fair to say Brenton Thwaites, Luke Bracey and Jack Reynor did not make the cut, while Variety is careful to point out that Till may have a slight advantage over his new competitors but there are no clear frontrunners just yet. Woodley plays Tris Prior, whose futuristic dystopic world is one in which society is divided into factions (Dauntless, Abnegation, Amity, Candor, and Erudite), and each person is sorted into each faction based on a personality test that determines their dominant character traits. Born into the selfless faction Abnegation, Tris shocks her family when she opts to join Dauntless, the brave, instead. There she meets Four, a fellow Abnegation defector who has now taken on a leadership role in their new faction. Four is stand offish, mysterious and super hot. Well, of course. In any case, they discover they have bigger problems to worry about than their burgeoning romance. The film is scheduled to begin shooting in Chicago this spring for a March 21, 2014 release.

Till is perhaps best known for his role as Havok in “X-Men: First Class” (he’s not yet confirmed to return for its sequel, and scheduling conflicts would surely arise if he landed “Divergent”). He will next be seen Chan-wook Park’s “Stoker” opposite Mia Wasikowska and recently wrapped up shooting on “Paranoia” opposite Liam Hemsworth. Irvine was hand-picked by Steven Spielberg to star in his Oscar-nominated “War Horse” and also recently played Pip in a new adaptation of “Great Expectations.” He recently wrapped up shooting “The Railway Man”, in which he plays the younger version of Colin Firth. Pettyfer, who’s had YA adaptation experience thanks to his starring role in “I Am Number Four”, most recently headlined Steven Soderbergh’s sleeper hit “Magic Mike” opposite Channing Tatum. He recently wrapped up shooting on Lee Daniels’ “The Butler.”

Gareth Edwards eyeing Henry Cavill, Scoot McNairy and Caleb Landry Jones for “Godzilla” lead

January 7, 2013 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 1 Comment

So it looks like whatever Joseph Gordon-Levitt does next, it won’t be the reboot of “Godzilla”, to be helmed by indie breakout filmmaker Gareth Edwards. Despite an initial report from THR that Gordon-Levitt is amongst a select few potential leading men being considered for the lead role, they now update that Gordon-Levitt has already passed. Which is good news for he other guys on the list, who are, according to a Variety reporter, Henry Cavill, Scoot McNairy and Caleb Landry Jones.

There’s apparently some disagreement on who would be the best guy to fend off the iconic Japanese giant monster, with reports indicating the bigger names like Gordon-Levitt and Cavill are studio choices (more bankable, etc) while McNairy and Jones, lesser known, have shown great dramatic chops and are the choices of Edwards and the creative team. No official offers have gone out yet, with the script now being given a final polish by Frank Darabont, but a March start date is scheduled, so we could be finding out sooner rather than later who will lead the fight against Godzilla.

McNairy would seem to have a leg up on the competition, as he and Edwards broke out together in 2010′s low budget sci-fil thriller “Monsters”, and he certainly has seen a rise to his profile, especially after having a breakout year in 2012. Jones has blockbuster experience after playing Banshee in “X-Men: First Class”, but has stuck mostly to indies, most recently with two movies at the Toronto International Film Festival, Brandon Cronenberg’s “Antiviral” and Neil Jordan’s “Byzantium.” And while Cavill is a “studio choice”, it’s certainly unfair to downplay his talents, which he honed on four seasons of “The Tudors” before becoming Zack Snyder’s Superman and “Man of Steel” and gently nudged over to the “bankable” column.

Lucas Till joins Haley Bennett and Ashley Greene in horror “Kristy”

November 19, 2012 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting Leave a comment

Lucas Till has joined horror flick “Kristy” (also working under the title “Satanic”), according to Variety. Haley Bennett and Ashley Greene are already part of the film that follows a girl who leads her friends on a quest of survival and answers after being targeted by a mysterious gang of attackers over Thanksgiving break on a desolate college campus. No word if Till will play a friend or foe. Oliver Blackburn begins filming in New Orleans this month, and the shoot is expected to last through December.

“Kristy” shouldn’t affect Till’s chances of starring opposite Shailene Woodley in “Divergent”, for which he’s currently shortlisted for the male lead role of Four. However, his commitment to “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, in which he’ll reprise his role of Havok, just might, as it also films in the spring of 2013. His completed projects include corporate espionage thriller “Paranoia” opposite Liam Hemsworth and “Stoker” opposite Mia Wasikowska.

James McAvoy joining Benedict Cumberbatch in Bill Condon’s Wikileaks film

November 9, 2012 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 3 Comments

Benedict Cumberbatch is set to play Julian Assange and James McAvoy is in talks to play his right hand man Daniel Domscheit-Berg in Bill Condon’s untitled film about the founding of Wikileaks, reports Variety. “The Killing” star and new Robocop Joel Kinnaman had been rumored for the role of Domscheit-Berg earlier, but McAvoy is the one who’s getting the part.

Dreamworks is taking its source material from Domscheit-Berg’s “Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website” and “WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy” by David Leigh and Luke Harding, British journalists who worked at The Guardian and helped Assanage publish his first findings. Meanwhile, other filmmakers and even Assange himself remain at work on their own retellings of the formation of the whistleblowing organization, but it looks like Dreamworks has the edge by being the first. Filming is slated for next year, and will work around McAvoy’s “X-Men” sequel schedule.

McAvoy will reprise his role as Professor Xavier in “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, recently confirmed to be directed by original “X-Men” director Bryan Singer. He also recently wrapped up filming on a pair of films, “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him” and “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her” opposite Jessica Chastain, as well as Danny Boyle’s heist thriller “Trance.”

Caleb Landry Jones to star in “Hope and Glory” sequel “Queen and Country” for “Broken Dream” director John Boorman

September 11, 2012 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting Leave a comment

They may not have officially worked together just yet, but director John Boorman and actor Caleb Landry Jones have clearly seen something in each other throughout the audition and pre-preoduction process, and are now looking to do a second movie together, all before they even started shooting on their first one. Variety reports Jones, who landed the lead role in Boorman’s “Broken Dream.”, is now negotiating to also take the lead role in “Queen and Country”, the long gestating sequel to Boorman’s 1987 drama “Hope and Glory.”

“Hope and Glory”, described as semi-autobiographical, followed a young boy, Bill (Sebastian Rice-Edwards), as he grew up in London during WWII. “Queen and Country” will take place a decade later as Bill, now a young man to be played by Jones, is conscripted into the Korean War. Neither “Broken Dream” nor “Queen and Country” have a start date yet, but Variety reports insiders believe “Queen and Country” will actually film first.

Jones, who is most likely going to return to reprise his role as the mutant Banshee in sequel “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, recently repped two movies at the Toronto International Film Festival, Brandon Cronenberg’s “Antiviral” and Neil Jordan’s “Byzantium.”

Michael Fassbender negotiating to join Natalie Portman in Western “Jane Got a Gun”

August 27, 2012 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 2 Comments

They didn’t end up in Ridley Scott’s “The Counselor” together after all, but Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman have a second chance to become co-stars, as Vulture reports Fassbender is negotiating to join Portman-produced Western “Jane Got a Gun.”

“We Need to Talk About Kevin”‘s Lynne Ramsey will direct from a Black List script by Brian Duffield, and filmmakers are aiming for an early 2013 start. Portman plays a frontier woman whose husband returns home riddled with bullet holes as a result of his outlaw gang turning on him. She’s forced to turn to an ex-lover to defend her land and home. Fassbender is eyeing the role of the ex-lover.

The “Prometheus” star had an amazingly busy 2011 but looks to have no desire for a break. He is currently shooting “The Counselor”, as well as a third collaboration with director Steve McQueen on “Twelve Years a Slave.” He is also set to return as Magneto in “X-Men: First Class” sequel, “X-Men: Days of Future Past” early next year and is attached to romantic drama/thriller “The Mountain Between Us.”

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