For his film based on the story of real-life White House butler Eugene Allen, director Lee Daniels is assembling one of his most eclectic and star-studded casts yet. Chalk up another on the roster, as Robin Williams has agreed to play President Dwight D Eisenhower.
Williams, who has usually been found in presidential mode as Teddy Roosevelt in the Night At The Museum franchise, will be donning his dramatic hat instead for The Butler, which tracks Allen’s career over three decades and through the terms of no less than eight presidents.
He’s joining a cast that already includes Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Vanessa Redgrave, David Oyelowo, Terrence Howard, John Cusack, Alan Rickman, Jane Fonda and Colman Domingo.
Danny Strong adapted the script from Wil Haygood’s Washington Post article, which caught up with Allen as he attended President Obama’s inauguration in 2009.
Daniels starts shooting the movie this month in New Orleans and once he’s completed work on that, Williams will shift to The Angriest Man In Brooklyn. We brought word back in May that Williams had signed on to the movie, which follows a stand-in doctor who mistakenly tells an annoying patient that he only has 90 minutes to live. The doctor then kicks off a chase across New York to find the man as he starts a tour of the city to apologise to everyone’s he’s wronged. Phil Alden Robinson is directing that one in September.