With a certain Mr Potter now firmly in his rear view mirror, his stage run in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying winding down and The Woman In Black in the can, Daniel Radcliffe has time to look at other new possibilities. And one he’s apparently jumping at is the chance to play Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings.
Unlike Howl, which focused on Ginsberg’s work, Darlings is a thriller based around the real-life relationship between Ginsberg and contemporaries Jack Kerouac and William S Burroughs, who were all brought together by Lucien Carr. The latter was a Columbia University student implicated in the murder of David Kammerer, who was found dead in Hudson River in 1944.
The film, which John Krokidas plans to direct, has been in development for at least a couple of years, with producer Christine Vachon announcing in 2009 that they’d secured Jessie Eisenberg as Ginsberg, with Chris Evans as Kerouac and Ben Whishaw as Carr. Things have been quiet since then, and it would seem that the casting – of Ginsberg, at least – is changing. While Radcliffe dropped a hint during an interview with French publication Tetu last week sating he would likely be taking on the role of a gay character, there has been no official announcement about his involvement, so treat this as a rumour for now…