Casting News: Josh Brolin Is Spike Lee's Oldboy; George Clooney No Man from U.N.C.L.E.; Nick Nolte Joins Gangster Squad
Posted 08.30.11 by Ryan
The long-developing American remake of Oldboy took a giant step forward when it was announced in July that director Spike Lee would take over for previously-attached director Steven Spielberg. At the time of the announcement, no cast was announced, though Will Smith was attached during Spielberg's tenure on the project, and Christian Bale was recently rumored for the lead. Instead, the part will go to Josh Brolin, whom Deadline reports is now officially cast.
Brolin will play a man who is kidnapped on his daughter's birthday and held in solitary confinement for 15 years. When he is released, he seeks revenge from his captors. Screenwriter Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend) wrote the script for Oldboy which was inspired by director Chan-wook Park's 2003 South Korean movie of the same name that itself was adapted from the mid 1990s Japanese manga series written by Garon Tsuchiya and illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi.
Not much more in known about the project, having had such a long development process, and Park's take on the material was unique and will be difficult to follow, but it does appear to be going in an interesting direction with Lee at the helm and Brolin as the lead.
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Director
Ruben Fleischer (
Zombieland, 30 Minutes or Less) has already lined up an impressive cast for his (and Brolin's) next movie,
Gangster Squad, with Brolin headlining alongside
Ryan Gosling and
Sean Penn.
Deadline reports that the cast has been improved once again with the
addition of
Nick Nolte.
Gangster Squad follows a secret group of LAPD officers tasked with keeping East Coast gangsters like "Mickey" Cohen (Penn) out of Los Angeles. Brolin and Gosling lead the squad, comprised of Robert Patrick, Anthony Mackie, and Michael Pena, and Nolte will play chief of police Bill Parker, the man who orders the squad to band together. The rest of the cast includes Mireille Enos as Brolin's wife, Frank Grillo (Warrior) as a Chicago gangster named Ragan, and Emma Stone as a "sharp-tongued siren" caught in a love triangle with Gosling and Penn.
The Warner Bros. adaptation was based on The LA Times's seven-part series of articles titled "Tales from the Gangster Squad" from writer Paul Lieberman, with former LAPD officer and author Will Beall writing the screenplay. Production will begin next month.
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Director Steven Soderbergh has been talking about retiring from making movies for a little while, at times playing down the retirement talk, while later confirming it.
Presently Soderbergh will be shooting the indie stripper movie Magic Mike, and, next summer, he will finish off his career with the biopic Liberace with Matt Damon and Michael Douglas.
In between those two movies, Soderbergh is planning to reunite with his Out of Sight and Ocean's Eleven actor George Clooney for the adaptation of 1960s TV show The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. But Clooney has other plans. Deadline reports that the actor is "withdrawing" from the project. No specific reason is given for Clooney's departure. Warner Bros. still intends to keep the February 2012 start date, so Soderbergh will have to recast quickly.