James Gray’s latest, The Immigrant, hasn’t exactly flown high on the radar despite the presence of Jeremy Renner, Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix in the cast. His next film, The Lost City Of Z, seems destined for much more attention, because it already boasts Benedict Cumberbatch as the lead and has now snagged Robert Pattinson.
Bubbling away in development for a while, the adaptation of David Grann’s popular book once boasted Brad Pitt as the star, but he’s now simply on board to produce via his Plan B company. Cumberbatch took over the lead after entering talks in September and will play Percy Fawcett, who headed into Brazil’s Amazon jungles on a mapping quest in 1925. There, suffering from a nasty case of malaria, he claimed to have discovered a mythical city he called the Lost City Of Z.
When his adventurer peers roundly mocked the idea as a fantasy or fraud, Fawcett gathered up his son and one other companion and headed back into the jungle to prove his point. And that’s the last anyone saw of all three… The Wrap’s report on Pattinson’s addition doesn’t mention whether he’ll be one of the travellers (though it seems likely) or someone who casts doubt on Fawcett’s claims.
Gray is directing from his own script, but there’s no word on when it’ll kick off filming. Pattinson has most recently reunited with his Cosmopolis director David Cronenberg for Maps To The Stars, and has shot David Michod’s Aussie thriller The Rover. He’s scheduled to act in Mission: Blacklist and Werner Herzog’s Queen Of The Desert.
In the meantime, we look forward to seeing what the vast armies of Cumberbabes and Pattinsonians make of this news, and whether the darker corners of the fan-fic writing community faint dead away at the news.