Casting News: Three Actresses Fight to Join Tom Cruise in Horizons; Kerry Washington in Django Unchained
Posted 10.27.11 by Ryan
In August, five actresses were in contention for one of two female roles in Universal's upcoming sci-fi epic Horizons (formerly titled Oblivion), a role that was eventually won by Jessica Chastain (The Help, The Tree of Life). The movie stars Tom Cruise as a lonely man named Jack who repairs the drones that fight aliens on the planet's surface in a post-apocalyptic future.
Deadline reports that Hayley Atwell (Captain America), Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds), and Kate Beckinsale (Underworld) are all traveling to Pittsburgh this weekend to read for the role with Cruise, who is currently shooting the adaptation of One Shot in the city. According to the report, the actresses are vying for the role of a mysterious young woman who crash lands on Earth, much to Cruise's surprise, which would mean that Chastain has been cast as Julia, Jack's fiancee on Earth before the alien invasion.
Horizons (or whatever it ends up being called) will be directed by Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy), based on an upcoming graphic novel that Kosinski created. Academy Award–winning screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed) wrote the initial draft of the screenplay, and recently spoke to Collider about his experience on the movie.
I wrote the first script for Joe after we went and talked to Disney. I had a one-step deal. I wrote the script and then I revised it a little bit, but one draft is all they had me for. So I moved on to other work after that. I don’t have any idea what the script looks like now. I’ll be interested to see the picture.
Karl Gadjusek and Michael Arndt wrote the later drafts. Horizons is scheduled to open on July 19, 2013.
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Actress
Kerry Washington (
For Colored Girls) is the latest addition to the cast of writer-director
Quentin Tarantino's next movie, the "Southern" titled
Django Unchained.
According to Deadline, Washington has won the role of the long-suffering wife of a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) who is attempting to rescue his wife from a sadistic slave owner (Leonardo DiCaprio), who owns the despicable plantation called Candyland Ranch.
Washington joins a cast that already includes Kurt Russell (who replaced Kevin Costner after he dropped out) as brutal slave trainer Ace Woody, Laura Cayouette (Kill Bill, Vol. 2) as DiCaprio's widowed sister, Don Johnson as a wealthy plantation owner named Spencer Bennett, Samuel L. Jackson as Candie's valet, Stephen, and Christoph Waltz as the German bounty hunter that trains Django in his trade.
Already given a release date, Django Unchained opens on December 25, 2012.