Here's today's latest casting news:
- Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained) will join True Crimes, a dramatization of the cold-case killer Krystian Bala, a Polish writer who was convicted of murder in 2007. No director is currently attached but Roman Polanski has been floated as a possibility.
- Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) has joined the Paddington Bear adaptation, Paddington, as a lead. Hugh Laurie (House M.D.) is being courted to voice the title character but is not yet in negotiations.
Hit the jump for more on both projects.
First up from THR comes word that Waltz will join True Crimes, but not in the role you're probably expecting. Though the story centers on Bala, a writer whose novels eerily detailed a cold-case crime that had baffled Polish police for years. (Get your Polish jokes in here, if you'd like.) Bala was never suspected of the crime before his stories came to light; they caught the attention of Jacek Wroblewski (Waltz), the police officer who reopens the cold case and becomes entangled in the dark underworld of Poland's sex rings, prostitution and drugs. Waltz also recently signed on to Stephen Gaghan's The Candy Store, playing a Cold War consigliere posing as a typical American suburbanite.
And now for Paddington: A Tale of Two Hughes. The Wrap reports that Bonneville is in negotiations to play Henry Brown, the live-action lead in the adaptation of the beloved Michael Bond books from producer David Heyman (Harry Potter series). Paul King (The Mighty Boosh) is directing from a script he worked on with Hamish McColl (Mr. Bean's Holiday). Production is scheduled to start this fall.
Here’s the synopsis:
From the producer of HARRY POTTER, a modern take on the iconic and beloved adventures of Paddington bear, translated into 40 languages worldwide.
Adapted from Michael Bond’s beloved books, PADDINGTON tells the story of a polite young bear from Peru with an endearing talent for comic chaos, who arrives in London in search of a home.
Paddington has grown up deep in the Peruvian jungle with his Aunt Lucy who, inspired by a chance encounter with an English explorer, has raised her nephew to cook marmalade, listen to the BBC World Service, and dream of an exciting life in London. When an earthquake destroys their home, Aunt Lucy decides the time has come to smuggle her young nephew on board a boat bound for England, in search of a better life. Trusting of the kindness of strangers, she ties a label round his neck which simply reads ‘Please look after this bear. Thank you.’
Lost and alone at Paddington Station, Paddington soon finds that London is not the welcoming, well-mannered land of his dreams, but a rather busy, bustling metropolis where nobody even notices him. Luckily, he meets the Brown family who feel unable to abandon this homeless young bear to his fate. They name him after the station where they found him and offer him a place to stay while he searches for the only person he knows in London: the explorer who impressed Aunt Lucy years before.
But little do the Browns realize just how much comic mayhem one young bear will bring to their family life, and when this rarest of bears catches the eye of a sinister, seductive taxidermist, it isn’t long before his home – and very existence – is under threat…
Following in the footsteps of E.T., Paddington tells the universal tale of an outsider trying to find his place in the world – and gives it an exuberant comic twist. Like Mr. Bean, Paddington promises to delight and enchant the whole family.
