Key players from two of this year’s biggest indie darlings are teaming up, with word that The End of the Tour star Jason Segel is joining the cast of Collateral Beauty, the next film from Me, Earl & the Dying Girl helmer Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.
Segel will join the already-cast Hugh Jackman and Rooney Mara in the pic, which follows a New York advertising executive (Jackman) who experiences a crippling personal tragedy. His co-workers devise an unusual way to break him out of his depression, and the results are far different than anything that they could have expected. Gomez-Rejon is expected to shoot the project this fall.
Though the actor’s involvement isn’t a done deal yet, it’s a great move for Segel, who ventured into more dramatic territory recently when playing tormented novelist David Foster Wallace in the James Ponsoldt-directed End of the Tour. Simply put, he delivered a career-best, likely career-revitalizing performance. Segel is garnering Oscar buzz heading into the second half of the year, so it makes sense that he would want to continue exploring his dramatic range, unlike in some of his past films. The actor was an out-and-out revelation embodying Wallace, so it will be terrific to see him take on another complex part.
Allan Loeb (Things We Lost in the Fire, 21) penned the script for Collateral Beauty, and though the scribe has some mainstream comedies like Just Go With It and The Switch on his resume, the presence of Gomez-Rejon, Jackman, Mara and now Segel has this looking like a much classier affair. It was a big seller at the Cannes Film Festival, getting snapped up fast by PalmStar Media, and with Me, Earl & the Dying Girl getting rave reviews across the board, all eyes are on Gomez-Rejon to deliver an equally crowd-pleasing follow-up.
