Robert De Niro, Oscar Isaac, Donald Sutherland, and Anne Hathaway have joined Cate Blanchett for the period drama Armageddon Time.
The star-studded cast will team with writer/director James Gray for the production, which is based on his childhood memories growing up in America before Ronald Reagan became President and his experiences among the rich kids at a private school, which Donald Trump also attended.
“It’s symbolic about what the school represented at the time, entrenched in this white protestant ethic,” the filmmaker explains. “I found it very foreign to me, a product of the public school system in New York City of the ’70s. It’s about that transition and how it reflects on what the American society was and sadly still is. How we are separated along the lines of class and ethnicity. The film is really about that, my transition in school from one to the other.”
The filmmaker tells Deadline he hopes to shoot the drama in New York as soon as the coronavirus shutdown lifts and productions are able to resume.
“I’m anxious to make something that is very much about people, about human emotions and interactions between people, and I want it to be filled with warmth and tenderness,” the filmmaker says. “In some sense, yes it’s about my childhood, but an illustration of familial love really on every level. I’m of the belief that most people do their best and that they try their best under difficult circumstances and in some sense that’s a beautiful thing and very moving to me.”
