Ethan Hawke Is Macbeth

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Today in show business news: Ethan Hawke lands one of the biggest roles, Angelina Jolie is casting her next movie, and Wes Bentley's comeback continues.

Lincoln Center has announced that Ethan Hawke, one time video store Hamlet, will play the title character in the Scottish play. Yes, he'll be playing George Scottish Play. No, sorry, silly theater superstition. He's playing Macbeth in Macbeth, the great gloomy and doomy Shakespeare tragedy about ambition and guilt. No word yet on who will play his Lady Macbeth, which will in some ways determine how he plays the character, but no matter who it is and how Hawke does it, this is a big role for him. Playing Macbeth on Broadway, at Lincoln Center no less. Would we ever have dreamed that the dreamy, T-shirted slacker from Reality Bites would someday come this far? I can't imagine we would. [Playbill]

Angelina Jolie is hard at work casting her next directorial effort, an adaptation of the nonfiction WWII survival story Unbroken. She's looking for a young guy to play the lead, a soldier named Louis Zamperini who endured both a plane crash and a Japanese POW camp and is still alive today. It seems she's got three fellows in mind at the moment. There's Alexander Dreymon, who I've never heard of and maybe you haven't either. Then there's up-and-comer Jack O'Connell, who was on Skins for a while. And then there's Dane DeHaan, the pouty pouter from In Treatment, Chronicle, and The Place Beyond the Pines. Hm. Those are three very different looking people. And I feel like DeHaan would have to, I dunno, bulk up some to convincingly play a tough, resilient soldier. But who knows. I'm sure there are other people in the running too. How many times do you think Taylor Lautner's agent has called Angelina's agent and said, "Please...?" Probably lots. Lots and lots and lots. Which is sort of the spirit of the movie. Never give up. [Deadline]

Wes Bentley, the American Beauty bag filmer who got lost in the woods for a while, has just been cast as the lead role in Ryan Murphy's latest pilot, the HBO project Open. It's all about sex. And relationships, I guess. But mostly sex. Bentley will play "the handsome but arrogant Evan Foster, a bit of a blowhard who loves espousing his theories on human sexuality." Hm. OK. That sounds good for him. I'll buy it. I mean, this is a Ryan Murphy show, so his character will completely cease to make sense after the first season, if it gets picked up, so we shouldn't get too attached to that description. But for the time being, yeah, I like it. Nice to have Wes Bentley back, huh? [The Hollywood Reporter]

Now that Smash is done, Megan Hilty is trading Debra Messing for Sean Hayes. She's just been cast as a regular on Sean Saves the World, his new NBC sitcom. So that's funny. The little Will & Grace shuffle. Only two more cast members to go! Bet she can't wait to guest star on Perception. Everyone loves Perception. [Deadline]

Eddie Redmayne might be playing Stephen Hawking in a new biopic. What do you think? Does he look like him? I can see it. [Deadline]

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.