Casting News: Gina Carano is In The Blood; Game of Thrones Actor in Tom Cruise's Oblivion; Sullivan Stapleton in 300 Sequel
Posted 02.15.12 by Ryan
The recent action movie Haywire hasn't fared as well at the box office as it did with critics (though it has made back its budget), but its star, MMA fighter-turned-actress Gina Carano, has already lined up another action project.
THR reports that Carano has joined the cast of the action-thriller In the Blood for director John Stockwell (Blue Crush, the upcoming Dark Tide). Carano will play a wife whose husband disappears while vacationing in the Caribbean, so she recklessly pursues the men she thinks are responsible. "This role will showcase not only Gina’s fighting skills, but also her acting abilities as her character struggles to reign in her violent past," said Stockwell.
In the Blood was written by Bennett Yellin and James Robert Johnston (Joy Ride 2). Production is set to start in Puerto Rico in early spring or summer. Carano's Haywire stunt team is in discussions to reteam with her on In the Blood.
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The cast continues to grow for Oblivion, director Joseph Kosinski's (Tron: Legacy) post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic that stars Tom Cruise as a man who repairs the drones that fight the aliens on the Earth's now-destroyed and uninhabitable surface. Morgan Freeman was cast in an unspecified role last week.
Deadline reports that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jamie Lannister on HBO’s Game of Thrones, has been cast in the movie as Sykes, who was given the lengthy description of being a "battle-hardened, physically imposing, intelligent and extremely athletic military technology and weapons expert."
Oblivion is based on Kosinski's upcoming graphic novel of the same name and is currently being rewritten by Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine), from previous drafts by Academy Award–winning screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed) and Karl Gadjusek (Trespass). Oblivion has also gone by the title Horizons and even seemed to be without a title for a bit, but it looks like Oblivion is going to stick.
Coster-Waldau joins a cast that includes Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) and Andrea Riseborough (W.E.) who respectively play Cruise's companion and a mysterious woman who crash lands on the planet and sets off a chain of events that forces Cruise's character to question everything he knows.
Production is set to start this March in Louisiana, and is scheduled to open on July 19, 2013.
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It looks like Australian actor
Sullivan Stapleton (
Animal Kingdom) will play the male lead in the
300 sequel,
300: Battle of Artemisia (formerly
Xerxes), though what role he will play seems a matter of debate.
According to Variety, Stapleton was going to play Xerxes, though the report has backed off that claim and now says that the actor "wouldn't necessarily be playing Xerxes" and leaves the role Stapleton will be playing in question. Deadline reports that Stapleton will play the lead role of Themosticles, originally cast with the actor's Animal Kingdom co-star Joel Edgerton, until he decided to pass on the sequel. The report claims that Rodrigo Santoro, the Brazilian actor who played Xerxes in 300, is in talks to reprise his role.
Set during "the exact same three days" as as The Battle of Thermopylae, which was the inspiration for the first 300, Battle of Artemisia will follow Themosticles, the famed Athenian archon and general, as he leads the Greeks to victory against the invading Persians in the Battle of Artemisium. Eva Green (Casino Royale) has been cast as Artemisia, the ruthless, gold-covered goddess who persuades Xerxes to amass his Persian navy and helps lead them into battle against Themosticles' smaller fleet.
Based on the upcoming graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 director Zack Snyder and his screenwriting partner Kurt Johnstad wrote the script. Noam Murro (Smart People) will direct the movie, which will start shooting this summer.