Milla Jovovich Is Cymbeline’s Queen

UPDATE: Now with added Yelchin & Johnson

Milla Jovovich Is Cymbeline's Queen

by Owen Williams |
Published on

Update: Told ya there'd be more casting soon. We now have the young non-lovers at the heart of the story. Anton Yelchin has been cast as the cloddish Cloten, and he'll be haplessly vying for the affections of Dakota Johnson as Imogen.

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Michael Almereyda's Shakespeare adaptation Cymbeline already has Ed Harris, Ethan Hawke and Penn Badgley attached to star, and the latest addition to the cast is Milla Jovovich. Taking a break from slow-motion zombie killing in the Resident Evil franchise, she'll be playing the Queen to Harris' King in an updating of the story that trades Britons and Romans for bikers and corrupt cops.

It's an interestingly gritty take on one of Shakespeare's more out-there plays: a labyrinthine romance which on the page includes deception, disguises, cross-dressing and supernatural intervention. Jovovich's character, only ever named "Queen", is a typically devious Shakespearean manipulator: a plotter and would-be poisoner, and the second wife of King Cymbeline.

Harris, as we said, is the hapless King. Badgley is playing Posthumus, the dashing orphan who receives the amorous attentions of Princess Imogen, who is Cymbeline's daughter from his first marriage and is supposed to be marrying the Queen's doltish son Cloten.

Hawke's role hasn't been announced yet, but if we had to guess, we'd put him as Caius Lucius, the Roman general who'll be a cop captain in this incarnation. This is his second Shakespeare with Almereyda, following their slacker **Hamlet **in 2000.

Expect Cloten, Imogen and the rest to be cast before very long, since shooting is scheduled to start on August 19.

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