The reclusive director Terrence Malick is courting a large variety of cast members for his next feature Knight of Cups and it just keeps getting bigger. Joel Kinnaman, star of The Killing and the upcoming Robocop remake, is the newest addition to an already sizeable ensemble cast. The only detail on his role is that he’ll playing “a rich playboy” which means we can expect to see him in set photos toying about with cast members on a beach sometime in the near future.
Kinnaman is just one of the many actors who have been announced to have joined Knight of Cups since it started shooting a fair few months ago. Initially starting out with just the likes of Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman and Isabel Lucas, the film then added Antonio Banderas, Joe Manganiello, Ryan O’Neal, Wes Bentley and Imogen Poots among others. However, due to Malick’s style of filmmaking, it is very likely that some of these cast members won’t make the final cut.
Malick has of course done this many times before, infamously on The Thin Red Line where big draw stars filmed parts for the movie only to later discover that they had been cut. Mickey Rourke, Gary Oldman, Martin Sheen and Billy Bob Thornton were among some of the actors who filmed substantial cameos but failed to get past Malick’s editing bay.
More recently with To the Wonder (which will be premiering at Venice and Toronto), Jessica Chastain had said that she filmed a small role but highly doubted whether she would turn up in the final cut. And if you read the cast listings on the festival websites you’ll see that her prediction has most likely come true.
Malick is prone to wildly altering his scripts during filming, which includes adding characters. Kinnaman’s casting has likely come about because of this and also because he has a little window of availability and jumped at the chance. Actors will line up to work with Malick simply for the experience of working with him and not particularly caring if they appear on screen.
No word yet on when Knight of Cups will wrap (let alone be released) but Terrence Malick’s next feature To the Wonder debuts in North America at TIFF in a couple of weeks.
Source: The Playlist
