If Steven Spielberg called you up and asked you to take a role in his new film, what would you do? I’ll tell you what you’d do: sign on the dotted line so fast your nagging wife would think the contract was for a divorce. Wow, that was a bit harsh, but you get the idea. Spielberg’s one of those guys that actors pray to get the chance to work with their entire lives so when the opportunity arises, there’s no screwing around. You’ve got to bring your A-game to the set because there are no second chances. It’s all or nothing.
I’d bet, then, that right about now a dozen or so of Hollywood’s finest are a bit jittery over being asking to join the Oscar-winning auteur’s highly-anticipated new period drama Lincoln, which has been in the works for more years than I can remember. DreamWorks has stated that Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce McGill, James Spader, David Costabile, Joseph Cross, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Hal Holbrook, Byron Jennings, Dakin Matthews, Boris McGiver, Gloria Reuben, Jeremy Strong and David Warshofsky have joined the production. That is an impressive pool of talent, adding to the award winning duo of Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field playing Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln.
Most of the actors’ roles are unspecified at this time, but a few have been revealed. Jones will play Thaddeus Stevens, while Gordon-Levitt will portray Robert Todd Lincoln, meaning that he’s going to get to share many frames with multiple Oscar winner Day-Lewis and will hopefully learn lots from the chameleon-like thespian. A report filed yesterday stated that production on the epic biopic would begin in the fall in Virginia for a possible late 2012 release.
I don’t really know what else to say other than “Oscar bait.” This film has all the makings of an Academy Award sweep, with a screenplay from the great Tony Kushner (Munich) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (who also wrote the novel from which the film is based) and Spielberg’s regular acclaimed production crew on board to bring 19th Century America to vividly breathtaking life. We’ll return with more information on further casting and role identification as it becomes available.
Source: DreamWorks Pictures
