Joel Edgerton Joins Michael Shannon In Jeff Nichols’ Sci-Fi Chase Film
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Australian actor Joel Edgerton is currently in the middle of filming Gavin O’Connor’s western drama Jane Got a Gun, a film that has seen a ridiculous amount of behind-the-scenes drama plague it. While Edgerton and Natalie Portman have been attached for a while, the film has seen stars Jude Law, Michael Fassbender, and Bradley Cooper all come and go, while original director Lynne Ramsay dropped out of the project on the first day of filming. That’s what some might call a problem child. Hopefully, the only troubles happening in Edgerton’s next project will be part of the narrative.
Edgerton will be joining Michael Shannon in Jeff Nichols’ next flick, which was called Midnight Special at one point, but is apparently nameless at the moment. It will be the first studio film for Nichols, whose indie cred should certainly make him a household name in the next few years, and adding an up-and-coming star like Edgerton is only going to help things.
There’s still not much of a plotline to chew on. It’s just called a “sci-fi chase film,” and Nichols at one point compared the film’s spirit to that of John Carpenter’s Starman. Take from that what you will.
At this point, Edgerton is most famous for his roles in Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty and in Baz Luhrmann’s recently released adaptation of The Great Gatsby, but his acting chops really came out in the crime thrillers The Square and Animal Kingdom. You guys might remember him from the remake of The Thing (second John Carpenter reference!), but we’ll just pretend otherwise. He’s supposed to be in the Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass, and it’s unclear which of these projects would come first.
Given how Shannon’s villainous turn in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel will probably boost his star cred, this might end up getting a lot of attention for Nichols, who directed the stellar, Saturn Award-winning sci-fi-ish film Take Shelter. (It won a bunch of other awards, too.) He’s also responsible for this year’s drama Mud, with Matthew McConaughey, and 2007’s dramatic thriller Shotgun Stories, which Shannon also starred in.
