Variety reports that Indie darling Brit Marling has booked the female lead in Robert Redford‘s latest directorial and starring effort, The Company You Keep. Marling was one of the big stars to emerge from the 2011 Sundance Film Festival on the strength of her writing and acting in The Sound of My Voice and her much praised performance in the drama Another Earth. In The Company You Keep, she will play Redford’s daughter.
The film will have Redford directing himself for the first time since the 2007 political thriller Lions for Lambs. Redford will play a seemingly upstanding citizen who is forced to go on the run after a reporter, played by Shia LaBeouf, discovers that he is on the FBI Most Wanted list as a former member of the ’60s militant group The Weather Underground.
The story is based on the 2003 novel by Neil Gordon. The book had six narrators including Redford’s radical-on-the-run, LaBeouf’s journalist and Marling’s daughter character, along with former members of the Weather Underground. Redford’s Jason Sinai attempts to contact said members after being forced to go on the run.
That means it’s likely Redford has a couple more potentially juicy roles to cast for older actors and actresses; one of whom may be played by Nick Nolte. Lem Dobbs, writer of Dark City and The Limey, penned the script for The Company You Keep. Whether Dobbs and Redford will keep Gordon’s narrative structure or tighten things up to focus on the three main characters is unknown thus far.
Also unknown is when The Company You Keep will go into production or when we can expect to see it in theaters. For now, Marling can be seen in Another Earth which is in limited release with possible expansions over the next couple weekends.
No word yet on the release of Marling’s other Sundance hit The Sound of My Voice. Marling also recently wrapped the drama Arbitrage with Richard Gere, Tim Roth and director Nicholas Jarecki. Arbitrage arrives in theaters in 2012.
