We’re hearing this morning that Ben Affleck is in talks to join Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan in Baz Luhrmann’s THE GREAT GATSBY. The news comes courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, who say that Affleck will be joining the very A-list cast of the film, which kicks off shooting in August.
DiCaprio is set to play the title role of the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby, while Maguire is playing Nick Carraway. Mulligan is playing Gatsby’s love interest, Daisy Buchanan, who is married to a wealthy chap named Tom Buchanan. Guess who’s playing Buchanan? Well, Affleck of course, just as long as he can sort out a slight scheduling conflict with his next directorial effort, ARGO, which is set to lens in September.
The film is based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel of the same name which is set during the first World War, and will come to the screen in 3D, Luhrmann’s first attempt in shooting in the format.
WikiPedia has details:
American society enjoyed prosperity during the “roaring” 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely regarded as a paragon of the Great American Novel, and a literary classic. The Great Gatsby has become a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world and is ranked second in the Modern Library’s lists of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.
