Blessed with a strong cast (Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt), a strong director (Ridley Scott) and perhaps one of the strongest writers to ever write (Cormac McCarthy), The Counsellor is, it's safe to say, a strong bet for Oscar contention come early next year.
To whet your appetite for such a fortuitous event, here are several more stills from the set, featuring both Cameon Diaz and Brad Pitt in helluvabig hats.
Pitt, who spoke to Empire in Cannes last year after the premiere of Andrew Dominik’s crime thriller Killing Them Softly, said the following about his role in The Counsellor.
“I’m only doing a few days on that,” he explains. “Andrew and I are both Cormac McCarthy fans — I mean, I’ve read every word the guy’s published and most of them more than once. So this was a chance to do something of his and also to work with Ridley again. Ridley gave me my first break into the big leagues [with 1991’s Thelma & Louise]. And I’m a Fassbender fanatic too.”
McCarthy (author of No Country For Old Men, **The Road **and All The Pretty Horses) delivered the spec screenplay for The Counsellor to his surprised publishers in January last year, and Scott was signed as director only weeks later.
The story involves a successful lawyer (Fassbander) who thinks he's clever enough to exploit the system by moonlighting in the drug business, but finds himself quickly dragged into a world of pain.
Naysayers are starting to mutter that that sounds rather like Breaking Bad, but producer Steven Schwartz is understandably enthusiastic: "Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with his sexual obsessions. It’s a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy’s wit and humour in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.”
"We started a week after Prometheus came out," Scott told Empire last year. "It has a classic Cormac McCarthy darkness which makes you sick to the pit of your stomach. It's really frightening. It's saying: 'Don't play with the devil, don't step across the line, don't think you can do it and get away with it. You can't.'"
Quite clearly we were sold even before it started reuniting the cast of Vanilla Sky, but we're even, erm, sold-er now. Expect plenty more on The Counsellor before it reaches our theatres on November 15.