Mr Robot‘s lead actor Rami Malek has joined the cast of the Papillon remake. Malek will join the already cast Charlie Hunnam in the remake of the Steve McQueen movie, which itself was based on the memoirs of convicted felon and fugitive Henri Charriere.
Malek will play the role previously assumed by Dustin Hoffman in the 1973 original, the quirky counterfeiter Louis Dega. Hunnam will play McQueen’s character, fugitive Henri Charriere, who staged an epic escape from Devil’s Island, a notorious penal colony in French Guiana, South America.
The original book’s synopsis is below. Shooting on the new film starts later this year.
Condemned for a murder he did not commit, Henri Charriere, nicknamed Papillon, was sent to the penal colony of French Guiana. Forty-two days after his arrival he made his first break for freedom, travelling a thousand gruelling miles in an open boat. He was recaptured and put into solitary confinement but his spirit remained untamed: over thirteen years he made nine incredible escapes, including from the notorious penal colony on Devil’s Island.
