Jodie Foster is looking to bulk up the cast of her new financial hostage thriller Money Monster. She already has George Clooney aboard, but is now in talks with Julia Roberts and Starred Up’s Jack O’Connell.
Money Monster features Clooney as Les Gates, a loud, gregarious financial TV host who offers up stock advice on his eponymous hit cable TV show in a style that would probably make Robert Peston blanche. Roberts is circling the role of Nancy Fenn, the director and executive producer of the show, who might also be closer to Gates.
As for O’Connell, he’s being courted for the role of Kyle Budwell, a blue-collar worker sick of the damage still being done by Wall Street. With a growing family to support, he decides to take Gates hostage on air to increase a stock’s value and expose the corruption behind the stock market. Which makes it all sound a little like the 2002 Denzel Washington drama John Q, swapping cash for medical treatment.
With a script by Jamie Linden developed from earlier work by Alan DiFiore and Jim Kouf, Foster is set to shoot the film next year. Roberts, no stranger to co-staring with Clooney after the Ocean’s films, is attached to star in the adaptation of Argentine thriller The Secret In Their Eyes, which has Billy Ray aboard to direct. As for O’Connell, he’ll be seen in Angelina Jolie’s Louis Zamperini biopic Unbroken (due December 26) and Tulip Fever, which has yet to score a UK release date.