David Cronenberg has experienced a huge shift in casting recently on his upcoming feature Cosmopolis. Last month Colin Farrell pulled out from the project to work on the reboot of Total Recall. He was replaced by Robert Pattinson. Now Marion Cotillard who was set to play Farrell’s wife in the film has bailed. It’s understandable also since it wouldn’t be THAT convincing to see Pattinson and Cotillard as a married couple. Now it has been announced that Keira Knightley has replaced her.
The film is adapted from Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name and is about:
24 hours in the life of a newly married billionaire Eric Packer (Pattinson) as he cheats on his wife, is pursued by a stalker, gets attacked by a protester and gradually loses his entire fortune over the course of a single day.
There is also other news regarding this project. Paul Giamatti has now apparently dropped out of the film, according to reports. He was set to play the stalker. He has now gone, presumably because of the casting changes. Knightley is certainly an interesting choice, but not a wholly unfavourable one. Cronenberg clearly thinks there is something about her, they recently worked together on the yet unreleased A Dangerous Method which is about the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, one of the films I am seriously looking forward to this year. So he clearly thinks she has the talent to pull off the role successfully. We’ll keep you posted on this very intriguing project.