Precious director Lee Daniels, talking to USA Today about his Oscar week activities, let slip that he's cast Hugh Jackman in his next project, US civil rights movie Selma. The role that Jackman's set to play is not yet clear, but we're pretty sure he's not playing the lead.
The main roles in the film are said to be Martin Luther King, his wife Coretta Scott King, and President Lyndon B. Johnson, with the film focusing on the relationship between King and Johnson, and on the three marches from the heavily segregated Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery in 1965 to win support for the Civil Rights movement. We're told that the film will paint a more complex portrait of King than is often given; not underplaying his achievements but equally not portraying him as a saint.
But none of those characters seems an obvious fit for Jackman, what with two of them being black and one of them being ugly, so it may be that he's taking a smaller, supporting role - murdered civil rights activist James Reeb, perhaps? In any case, Daniels' comment to USA Today that this is the only role currently locked in suggested that reports that De Niro had been cast (as, it was rumoured, Alabama Governor George Wallace) were at the very least premature.
Given how exceedingly good Precious was, Daniels is clearly one to watch, so we'll be keeping an eye on this one going forward for further casting news.