With it being around four years since her last feature, an striking update on Wuthering Heights, we’ve been looking forward to Andrea Arnold‘s follow-up for quite some time. After news the project, American Honey, might begin production last summer, it looks like after a delay, things are finally moved forward with the announcement of the first casting.
According to Variety, Shia LaBeouf has signed on for the directors’ first feature in the U.S., which is a road movie that follows a runaway teenager selling magazine subscriptions around the country. He gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard-partying, law-bending and young love. Although there’s no mention of when it might start shooting, hopefully it kicks off by next year. Meanwhile, the Nymphomaniac star will be seen in Dito Montiel‘s Man Down later this year.
In other casting news, the forthcoming drama Lion, which The Weinstein Company will distribute, has expanded its cast. Already led by Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel, Screen Daily reports Rooney Mara, David Wenham and Divian Ladwa have joined the ensemble. A biopic of Saroo Brierley, it follows the true story of the man who was separated from his mother at the age of five and reuinted with her 25 years later. Also starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priyanka Bose, Tannishtha Chatterjee and Deepti Naval, directed comes from Garth Davis (Top of the Lake). We’d imagine it’ll be ready later this year. Check out the synopsis below.
In Lion, five-year-old Saroo finds himself alone and travelling on the wrong train away from his home in northern India. Frightened and bewildered, he winds up thousands of kilometers away, in chaotic Kolkata. Somehow he survives living on the streets, dodging all sorts of terrors in the process.
Eventually ending up in an orphanage, Saroo is adopted by an Australian couple, and finds safety and love as he grows up in Hobart. Not wanting to hurt his adoptive parents’ feelings, he buries his past, his emotional need for reunification and his hope of ever finding his lost mother and brother. But a chance meeting with some fellow Indians reawakens his secret yearnings.
With just a small store of memories, and the help of a new technology called Google Earth, Saroo embarks on one of the greatest needle-in-a-haystack quests of modern times…the search for where he came from.
Are you looking forward to the above projects?