Fresh off a well-received turn as Louis Gaines in Lee Daniels’ The Butler, British thesp David Oyelowo has joined the already-impressive cast of All Is Lost director J.C. Chandor’s next project: the 1981 crime drama A Most Violent Year.
Set in New York City during the cruel winter of 1981, a year that saw one of the all-time highest rates of violent crime for the city, A Most Violent Year follows an immigrant (Oscar Isaac) and his family as they attempt to build a successful life for themselves without getting dragged into the crime, corruption and moral decay of the day.
Oyelowo is the latest casting coup for the hotly-anticipated drama. We already knew that Isaac would be joined in A Most Violent Year by Jessica Chastain, a two-time Oscar nominee for The Help and Zero Dark Thirty, but Drive actor Albert Brooks also signed on for the project earlier this week, playing the attorney for Isaac’s character.
No word yet on who Oyelowo will portray in A Most Violent Year, but he’ll certainly bring his trademark charisma and intensity to whichever role Chandor hands him. Aside from The Butler, audiences might recognize Oyelowo from his roles in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Lincoln and Jack Reacher.
A Most Violent Year is already shaping up to have one of the most formidable casts of the 2014 Oscar season, so it’s no surprise that distributor A24 Films wants to open the film this fall or winter as a potential awards contender. It’s certainly got a strong cast, and Chandor is already a familiar name to Academy voters, as he earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination for Margin Call then directed Robert Redford last year in the acclaimed All Is Lost.
The film started shooting on location today, and production is expected to move quite quickly, so Chandor shouldn’t have too much trouble getting A Most Violent Year prepped for the 2014-15 awards circuit. Given that he both directed and wrote the screenplay, it doesn’t seem too early to start getting excited about this project either.
Are you excited to see A Most Violent Year? Let us know in the comments.
