Adam Driver is a man in demand. No sooner had the actor set down the blistering crossguard lightsaber from Star Wars: The Force Awakens had he lined up a series of eye-catching roles across Midnight Special and Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-tipped period piece, Silence.
Now, Driver has pulled off a one-two punch, landing roles Terry Gilliam’s long-gestating drama The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and Logan Lucky, the Steven Soderberg-directed (yes, you read that right) NASCAR heist movie that just yesterday added Riley Keough of The Girlfriend Experience to its growing cast.
Heralding Soderberg’s first directorial effort since Side Effects in 2013, Deadline also notes that Seth MacFarlane has entered talks to join Keough and now Driver in the picture, potentially rounding out an ensemble that already boasts Channing Tatum. Michael Shannon, meanwhile, bowed out of the project in order to team with Guillermo del Toro on the director’s as-yet-untitled Cold War romance.
As for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Driver will headline opposite Michael Palin, effectively stepping into the roles once occupied by Jack O’Connell and John Hurt. Production has been slated for a start in the fall, and Flick Reel posted an extensive synopsis offering some insight into Terry Gilliam’s latest:
“There was a time when Toby was a young film student full of ideals. So he decided to shoot a film adapted from the story of Don Quixote in a pretty Spanish village.
But those days are gone and now Toby is an arrogant publicist, libidinous and jaded. Money and glitter have corrupted him, and while he is in Spain where he finishes filming an ad, he has to juggle with his boss’s wife – Jacqui – a calamitous weather, and his own ego. This is when a mysterious gypsy comes to find him with an old copy of his student film: Toby is upset and decides to go in search of a little village where he had made his first work a long time ago. He discovers with horror that his little film has had terrible effects on this quiet place. Angelica, the girl full of innocence, became a high-class call girl; and the old man who played Don Quixote lost his mind, convinced in his delusion of being the real “Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.”
With Driver and Palin now in tow, expect The Man Who Killed Don Quixote to enter production before the year’s end. Logan Lucky, on the other hand, is currently being shopped at Cannes, with a tentative release date placed for 2017.