Just days after actor Tom Hiddleston took to the stage at the Wheatland Music Festival to perform Move It On Over and I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, teasing his upcoming performance as Hank Williams in biopic I Saw The Light, Godzilla actress Elizabeth Olsen has signed on in the role of Williams’ wife, Audrey Mae.
Marc Abraham, a veteran producer, is directing the biopic from a script that he wrote about Williams’ stunning rise to fame and the heavy toll that his newfound celebrity took on him and his loved ones. Williams died of heart failure at 29, following years of struggling with alcoholism and addiction to prescription pills. As one might expect, the biopic will also feature many of Williams’ songs, seeing as producers secured rights to the singer’s catalog, which includes Your Cheatin’ Heart, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry and Hey Good Lookin’.
It will be refreshing to see Olsen, a talented actress who broke out a few years ago with a tour-de-force performance in thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene, get back to more dramatic fare in I Saw The Light. Her excursion into blockbuster territory that began with her supporting part in this summer’s Godzilla is already set to continue through next May, when she’ll take on the role of Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Age of Ultron. A smaller film in which Olsen will play an emotional, complex role is likely exactly what the actress was searching for.
Production on I Saw The Light is due to kick off this October in Louisiana.
