Having left Bond behind and put aside the frustration with stalled next project The Voyeur's Motel and its dubious validity, Sam Mendes is moving full speed ahead on World War I drama 1917. He now has George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman in early negotiations to join the film.
Mendes wrote the script with Voyeur's Motel's Krysty Wilson-Caines, and while the plot is largely being kept quiet, we do know it will follow two young soldiers as they make a trek across dangerous terrain.
Steven Spielberg's Amblin company is behind the film, having won the rights to make it last year, and Mendes is lining up an April shoot so Universal can have the movie ready to release later in 2019.
MacKay, best known for the likes of Pride, Captain Fantastic and The Secret Of Marrowbone, is playing Hamlet in new Shakespeare take Ophelia and appears in Where Hands Touch and The True History Of The Kelly Gang. Game Of Thrones veteran Chapman as worked on David Michôd's The King and indie drama Here Are The Young Men.
Keep up to date with all the latest movie news, click here to subscribe to Empire on Great Magazines and have the latest issue delivered to your door every month.