Amy Adams and Steve Carrell also in negotiations.
After a string of blockbuster comedies starring Will Ferrell — Anchorman, The Other Guys, Step Brothers — writer-director Adam McKay side-stepped a little a couple years back with The Big Short, an ensemble flick about the real-life housing bubble collapse of the mid-2000s. The film earned the best reviews of McKay’s well-reviewed career, and wound up with five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and one win for McKay’s screenplay (with Charles Randolph).
It shouldn’t be surprising then that for his big screen follow-up, McKay would return to the ripped-from-the-headlines genre, this time tackling a biopic of one of the most shadowy and misunderstood figures of this century to-date: Former Vice President Dick Cheney. And the cast he’s building? Start polishing the Oscars.
According to Variety’s sources Bale is on board to play Cheney, while Amy Adams is in talks to play his wife, Lynne, and Steve Carrell is in talks to play Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. McKay will once again write the script and is hoping to start shooting “in the spring for an awards-season push.” If that’s this spring, better sign those contracts fast.
This would be Bale and Adams’ second time as an onscreen couple, after American Hustle, and the second collaboration between Bale and Carrell, who were in The Big Short together. Given the age of the actors, expecting a sweeping life story that starts in the early 70s with the Nixon administration and carries through the second Bush administration.
Calling it now: the scene where Cheney “accidentally” blasts that dude in the face with a shotgun while quail hunting is going to be the funniest of the year.
In other news and points of interest…
…Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series Master of None is a little over a month away from dropping its second season on May 12th, and to tide us over, here’s the second trailer…
…after new broke the other day that Sylvester Stallone had withdrawn from the fourth installment of The Expendables, a franchise he originated, co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger has spoken out about whether or not he’s staying with the film…
…Spike TV released the first trailer for its biographical documentary I am Heath Ledger…
…producers of Ghost in the Shell finally admitted that casting a while person in the lead might have hurt their box office…
…and Eric Roth, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Forrest Gump, has come aboard to pen Denis Villeneuve’s take of Dune.
Over in our corner of the internet we had a lot of really interesting posts go up yesterday, including a preview of Ben Wheatley’s Freakshift, an exploration of Douglas Sirk’s melodramas, a list of monster team-up films inspired by Colossal, filmmaking tips from Mark Webb, director of Gifted, and the latest episode of the Shot by Shot podcast featuring a discussion of the cinematography in Martin Scorsese’s Silence and an exclusive interview with the film’s DP, two-time Oscar nominee Rodrigo Prieto.
And lastly, take a look at five of the most popular shots we tweeted over the last 24 hours. Want more? You know where to find us.
Related Topics: Culture, One Perfect Shot
