In case the endlessly busy 25-year-old prodigy Xavier Dolan didn’t already make you feel lazy, he’s already moved on to the casting of his next film after finishing production on next year’s star studded melodrama, It’s Only the End of the World. According to Screen Daily, Dolan is preparing to move forward with his first English language film, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, with the equally prolific Jessica Chastain, and Kit Harrington, who’s making continued inroads into film after his memorably brooding turn on HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Susan Sarandon and Kathy Bates have also been confirmed for the film, set to shoot in spring 2016, which reportedly delves into themes of identity and fame in showbiz, and focuses on a young actor reminiscing on a past pen pal relationship with his American TV idol. Describing the film, Dolan said, “It is a movie about a man trying to make it, trying to live his dream and his life all at once, and being told that he basically can’t.”
Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth hasn’t even hit theaters, but Kurzel is already gearing up for a new project after next year’s adaptation of popular video game franchise, Assassins Creed. Deadline reports that he’s setting his sights on an adaptation of Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark’s book, The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel. Based on true events, the book chronicles the harrowing minute-to-minute details of the 2008 terrorist attack on the iconic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel by Pakistani militants.
Anthony McCarthen, screenwriter for last year’s Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, is set to script the film, which will allegedly aim for a similar milieu as Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips and Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. Levy and Scott-Clark’s book tells the story of the hundreds of guests and hotel staff who were held at gunpoint for 68 hours, and the heroic few who fought back to lower the number of lives lost in the tragedy.
Kevin Spacey hasn’t been on theater screens since 2014, dividing his time between the role of commander-in-chief on House of Cards and appearing as a grotesquerie of himself in Call of Duty, but Deadline is reporting that he’s in final negotiations for two promising roles after next year’s Elvis and Nixon.
Edgar Wright’s chase film, Baby Driver, has already reined in a diverse cast with Ansel Elgort, John Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Lily James. Spacey is the latest to join the ensemble, in a key role as a career criminal who entices the hotshot getaway driver played by Elgort into increasingly dangerous heists.
Spacey will play an equally slippery big fish in Billionaire Boys Club, an 80s-set true crime story of Joe Hunt, a notorious high roller whose risky investments pushed him into fraud, schemes, and murder. Spacey will pay the unlucky stiff whose check didn’t clear. Billionaire Boys Club also stars Kingsman: The Secret Service breakout, Taron Egerton and Elgort.
Which projects are you most looking forward to?