Casting Couch: Bonham Carter Gears Up for T4; Matthew Fox Up in Smoke
Helena Bonham Carter is testing her mettle against the Machines.
The Oscar-nominated thesp is in negotiations to play a small but pivotal role in Terminator Salvation, the fourth film in the sci-fi/action franchise, Warner Bros. confirmed today.
T4 stars Christian Bale as an adult John Connor leading humanity’s rebellion against Skynet and its army of killer cyborgs. Sam Worthington costars as a time-hopping amnesiac who teams up with Bale’s character. McG (Charlie’s Angels) is directing.
No word exactly on the nature of Carter’s part, but, along with Bale, the Wings of the Dove star’s casting brings a whiff of prestige to a series best known for launching the big-screen career of Arnold Schwarzenegger with robotic lines like “I’ll be back” and “hasta la vista, Baby.”
Carter is no stranger to summer blockbusters, with roles in the Harry Potter franchise and partner Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes redo.
Shooting began last month in New Mexico; Terminator Salvation is being targeted for a May 22, 2009, release.
In other casting news:
- Marcia Gay Harden, Juliette Lewis, Kristen Wiig and Zoe Bell have signed on to star opposite Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore in Whip It!, a roller-derby comedy that will also mark the E.T. star’s feature-helming debut. Harden plays a bossy beauty queen who pressures her daughter (Page) to forgo the ring for pageants, while Lewis is the team’s star, Dinah Might, SNL’s Wiig is boisterous mentor Malice in Wonderland and Bell is a medical technician moonlighting as derby skater Bloody Holly. Shooting starts this summer.
- Gone Baby Gone Oscar nominee Amy Ryan will be back for a multiepisode stint in NBC’s The Office, reprising her role as a human resources rep (and potential Michael Scott love interest) Holly Flax.
- Lost’s Matthew Fox is in talks to headline Warner Bros.’ movie adaptation of the forthcoming comic book Billy Smoke, about a contract killer who’s eyeing to redeem himself after a bungled job by ridding the world of all of its hitmen.
- Jesse Plemons is putting aside the pigskin in NBC’s Friday Nights Lights for a role opposite Kevin Spacey, Robin Williams and Saffron Burrows in the indie drama Shrink. Plemons plays a drug dealer who supplies pot to Spacey’s character, a Hollywood psychiatrist who turns to Mary J. due to his inability to deal with a personal tragedy and his own patients.
- Erik Jensen, Jose Pablo Cantillio and Clea DuVall are set to topline a two-hour backdoor pilot for Fox called Virtuality, a sci-fi drama about a starship on a mission to explore a distant solar system. Jensen plays the ship’s navigator, Cantillo a mathematician and DuVall the copilot and engineer.
- Malik Yoba and Warren Kole are joining the ensemble of Fox’s one-hour pilot Inseparable, a sort of modern-day Jekyll and Hyde tale starring Lloyd Owen. Both play detectives.
Christian Bale Compares Terminator 4 to Batman Begins; Helena Bonham Carter Joins Cast
Christian Bale took to the defensive, insisting that he accepted the role as John Connor in Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins because it reinvents the series.
“What I saw with Terminator was what I saw with Batman Begins,” Bale told at The Dark Knight junket.
But accepting another franchise role was not an easy decision in the least.
“That was actually something that I questioned greatly… ‘Do I want to do that again?’” Bale continued. “While Batman Begins was clearly an origin story and we were in many ways ignoring any of the other films that had come before it, this won’t be the case with Terminator, as we’re staying true to the mythology, certainly to one and two more than three, but it gave us the opportunity and the chance to reinvent and revitalize that. There is no point in making it otherwise. So that is my aim, and that is why I finally decided yes, I want to try this. Because that is the responsibility we have as filmmakers, and that is what I’m aiming to achieve.”
Meanwhile, the trades are reporting that Helena Bonham Carter is in talks to join the film in a “small but pivotal” role.
In the highly anticipated new installment of The Terminator film franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind. The film also stars Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese, Bryce Dallas Howard as Kate Connor, Moon Bloodgood as Blair Williams, Common as Barnes, and Jadagrace as Star. Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins hits theaters on May 22nd 2009.
Terminating Time
Those of you with Memorial Day travel plans to New Mexico might want to reconsiderthe machines are rising once again…in the vicinity of Albuquerque.
Principal photography began earlier this month on the latest cyborg sequel, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, which features Batman battling the baddies this time out.
Set in 2018, the film stars Christian Bale as resistance leader John Connor, who discovers a time-traveling amnesiac (Sam Worthington) and must decide whether or not he’s an ally against the Terminator-producing computers of Skynet.
McG got the cameras rolling back on May 5, according to Warner Bros., with the bulk of filming taking place at the Albuquerque Studios and on location throughout the Land of Enchantment.
Terminator Salvation, the fourth film in the billion-dollar franchise and the launchpad for a new trilogy, is scheduled to be released May 22, 2009.
Provided the machines don’t wipe us out by then.
Journeyman fans might want to see the new Terminator flick
Did you even know there was going to be a fourth film in the Terminator series? Yup, and it’s going to star Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, and Anton Yelchin (Huff and Chekov in the new Star Trek movie). Sorry, Arnold Schwarzenegger is busy being the Governor of California, but there another name added to the cast, and what a cool name it is.
Moon Bloodgood, who played Livia in Journeyman and Rita in the short-lived Daybreak, is about to sign on to the new sci-fi movie, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. The film will be directed by McG (he directed the Charlie’s Angels big screen movie) and is the first film in a planned trilogy. Bale will play John Connor (currently played by Thomas Dekker on FOX’s The Sarah Connor Chronicles)., fighting evil robots after most of mankind has been destroyed. I have no idea if this plot will make sense with what is currently going on in the FOX show (or in the previous movies, for that matter), but thinking too much about all of it will give you a headache anyway, so just accept whatever happens.