As he prepares to make his directorial debut with an ambitious adaptation of Philip Roth’s bestselling novel **Indignation, James Schamus is tracking down his cast. He’s confirmed Sarah Gadon and Fury’s Logan Lerman for the film.
Schamus also wrote the script, which will bring to the screen Roth’s 1951-set tale of Marcus Messner (Lerman), the young idealistic Jew who travels from New Jersey to study at a small, conservative college in Ohio. There he clashes with the administration, faces anti-Semitism and sexual repression and pines for a troubled girl, Olivia Hutton (Gadon). She’s promiscuous, headstrong and independent, and has previously spent time in an asylum after a suicide attempt.
And in the same Deadline story, word arrives that Gadon will also play one of the lead roles opposite James Franco in another adaptation: that of Stephen King’s 11/22/63. She’ll be Sadie, a librarian at the school that also employs Franco’s Jake. Our hero becomes obsessed with John F. Kennedy’s assassination and finds a way to travel back in time to try to prevent the shooting in 1960s Dallas, a mission complicated by his falling in love and the tricky, resolute nature of time, which keeps springing back into shape.
J.J. Abrams is producing the drama for Hulu, which has Black Sea’s Kevin Macdonald on board to direct the first two episodes of a nine-part miniseries from Bridget Carpenter’s script.
Gadon, last seen in Maps To The Stars, is part of the cast for The 9th Life Of Louis Drax and indie dramas **The Girl King **and A Royal Night Out. Lerman has worked on Björn Runge’s drama The Wife alongside Glenn Close, Christian Slater and Brit Marling.