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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]