This post is probably going to be a bit like kicking a beehive. Every time we run an article about the upcoming Thor movie, starring Chris Hemsworth as the Norse god of Marvel comics and legend, there is a flurry of comments reiterating the fan opinion that Alexander Skarsgård should have been the one cast. And, in a small interview, he says he very nearly was, and that he auditioned quite a few times. Read More »
We’ve known the main names in Rod Lurie’s remake of Sam Peckinpah’s shattering film Straw Dogs. James Marsden, Kate Bosworth and Alexander Skarsgard are toplining the film, which is in production in Louisiana right now. But yesterday Lurie mentioned two more names on Facebook: James Woods and Dominic Purcell. (Who needs the trades when directors can throw out their own casting news?) Does the presence of a great actor like James Woods change your mind about this odd remake? Read More »
Variety have named Kate Bosworth and Alexander Skarsgard, alongside the previously cast James Marsden, as the three key players in the Straw Dogs remake. Marsden will be playing a screenwriter relocating to Mississippi from LA, Bosworth his wife who travelled to La La Land with aspirations to become an actress, and Skarsgard her high school boyfriend who sees her return home to Mississippi as a way to reignite his lost reputation in the town.
When I heard that Straw Dogs is being remade, I wanted to hear that it would be handled by a director as unflinching and uncompromising as Sam Peckinpah, helmsman of the original (Chan Wook Park would have been ideal, for example). That it is Rod Lurie in charge, sometime film critic now best known for (occasionally polemical) political dramas like The Contender or TV’s Commander In Chief, leaves me both weary and a little curious. Whatever else he may or may not be, Lurie certainly isn’t a guy to pursue an easy gig with a simple knock-off cash in.
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