This is going to be a very busy fall for veteran Hollywood director Steven Spielberg.
Not only is his long awaited biopic of Abraham Lincoln, starring Daniel Day Lewis, hitting theaters on November 9, his IMAX transfer of Raiders of the Lost Ark also racked up a very successful run at the box office, not to mention casting for his next film, Robopocalypse, is coming together quickly.
Who does the big Spiel want for his leads? Chris Hemsworth and Anne Hathaway, who of course are both hot from the two biggest movies of the year, The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. Hemsworth also starred in the under-rated horror flick, Cabin in the Woods, and ironically enough, the screenplay for Robopocalypse was penned by Drew Goddard, who co-wrote Cabin with Joss Whedon.
As Variety and Collider note, also being looked at to star in the film is Ben Whishaw, who plays Q in the new James Bond flick Skyfall, and who stars in Cloud Atlas as well. Casting should come together fast for Robopocalypse, because it’s apparently going to start filming early 2013 for a world-wide release of April 25, 2014.
Tom Rothman, who just left his executive post at Fox and is producing ‘Pocalypse, told Deadline the film “is the kind of important epic entertainment, a big movie with big ideas, that Steven does better than any filmmaker on earth.”
And as Spielberg himself told Collider, ‘Pocalypse is “a cautionary tale about war between human beings and robots. It’s a big crowd pleaser, I think, a big action popcorn movie with a message.”
“The message is actually in the popcorn!” Spielberg continued. “You have to get the popcorn, dig down deep in the bottom and they’ll be a message about what Robopocalypse is really about!”
Based on a big best-seller by Daniel H. Wilson, Robopocalypse should indeed be the big crowd pleaser Spielberg can deliver with ease, and it should be great to see Hemsworth and Hathaway headlining the film together as well.
