Earlier this month, it was announced that Matthew Fox had nabbed the lead in Emperor. Now he’s being joined by some hefty co-star power, with Tommy Lee Jones cast as General Douglas MacArthur.
The historical epic finds Fox playing General Bonner Fellers, a member of MacArthur’s staff and a leading expert on Japan at the end of World War II. He’s given a tough assignment: deciding whether Japanese Emperor Hirohito should be tried (and then hanged) as a war criminal.
Fellers has a more personal mission occupying his time, too, as he’s also looking for Aya, a Japanese exchange student he met in the US and fell in love with before the War. There’s no word on who’ll play her just yet, though Peter Webber is gearing up to start shooting the film in New Zealand and Japan shortly.
Jones seems like the right call to play MacArthur, something of a US Army legend and essentially the ruler of Japan immediately following the conflict, as he also happened to be the Supreme Commander of the occupying forces. We doubt he’ll smile much, but then, that’s not really TLJ’s speciality. He'll show up this year in **Men In Black 3 **(sci-fi scowl) and **Lincoln **(historical frown).