Out of the Furnace director Scott Cooper has been quietly assembling his band of Hostiles over the past few months, welcoming old cohort Christian Bale and, more recently, Rosamund Pike on board for the historical drama.
That preliminary cast has expanded by one today, with Variety revealing that Jesse Plemons has closed a deal to star opposite Bale and Pike in the period epic. Best known for his recurring role in Noah Hawley’s Fargo series, the casting coup represents a reunion between Plemons and Cooper, who worked together on mob thriller Black Mass. This time around, he’s been cast as a young soldier in the cavalry unit headed up by Bale’s legendary army captain.
Taking place in 1892, Hostiles is rooted in a time when the actor’s skilful warrior “begrudgingly agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief and his family back to tribal lands. Making the harrowing and perilous journey from an isolated Army outpost in New Mexico to the grasslands of Montana, the former rivals encounter a young widow (Pike) whose family was murdered on the plains.”
It’s a potent true-life story that’s ripe for the picking, and it’s small wonder why Cooper is eager to get the cameras rolling later this year. Behind the scenes, Donald Stewart is the key scribe moulding Hostiles into a bona fide feature, while John Lesher and Ken Kao are attached to produce via Waypoint Entertainment.
Expect Scott Cooper to fire up production on Hostiles come July, ahead of a release in early 2017. Plemons, meanwhile, was last seen on the big screen in Steven Spielberg’s Cold War thriller, Bridge of Spies.
