Sharlto Copley Confirmed for ‘Oldboy’; Also Set to Star in ‘Open Grave’

By  · Published on May 2nd, 2012

Deadline Hawthorne reports that, after weeks of speculation, Spike Lee’s Oldboy has finally signed an interesting pick to play the film’s central villain. Sharlto Copley was the latest name rumored for the role just last month, but after rounds and rounds of unsuccessful casting for all three major roles in the film, it seemed like the project was a bit doomed. But now that Copley is officially set for the part, and costars Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen remain locked in, the film is set to start filming in late September.

Like Park Chan-wook’s 2003 film, Oldboy centers on Brolin’s character (in this incarnation, he is reportedly named “Joe Douchett”), a man who has been imprisoned against his will by an unknown man. Eventually freed, he’s set on a course to find the man who put him there (and to discover why) ‐ Copley will play “Adrian Pryce,” “a mysterious billionaire trying to destroy the life of Joe Douchett.”

But until Oldboy kicks off, Copley is busying himself with another high concept role, this time as a potential hero.

Copley will next shoot Gonzalo Lopez-Gallago’s (director of found footage flop Apollo 18) Open Grave in Hungary. The film follows Copley’s character, who “wakes up in [a] pit full of rotting bodies with no idea how he got there, [and] begins to have flashbacks of himself murdering people and starts to believe he’s the killer.” And, nightmares for a month, right there. The film’s IMDb page adds another level to the story, explaining that Copley’s character “wakes up in the wilderness, in a pit full of dead bodies, with no memory and must determine if the murderer is one of the strangers who rescued him, or if he himself is the killer.” You can’t trust anyone these days.

Copley will next be seen in Sebastián Cordero’s Europa and Neill Blomkamp’s (his District 9 director) Elysium.

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