Movies

Casting Short List Revealed For Bryan Singer's 'Jack The Giant Killer'

By Peter Sciretta

Heat Vision has gotten a hold of the short list of actors (and actresses) being considered for the lead roles in director Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Killer. he 3D fantasy/adventure project has been billed as an "adult look at the Jack and the Beanstalk legend." The plot summary is as follows: "When a princess is kidnapped, a long-standing peace between men and giants becomes threatened, and a young farmer is given an opportunity to lead a dangerous expedition to the giant kingdom to rescue her."

According to the report, Singer and the studio are hoping to do screen tests for the male and female leads in London within the next two weeks. Which actors and actresses are in line for the film? Find out after the jump.

Actors in line for the role of the title character, a young farmer named Jack:

  • Aaron Johnson – Kick-Ass, Nowhere Boy
  • Nicholas Hoult – About A Boy, The Weather Man, A Single Man, Clash of the Titans
  • Aneurin Barnard – a newcomer who is in the upcoming action film Ironclad
  • Jamie Campbell Bower – Sweeney Todd, New Moon, William Monahan's London Boulevard and appeared as Gellert Grindelwald in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 1

    • Singer discovered Johnson and Hoult while casting X-Men: First Class. Johnson did not get a role in that film, but Hoult plays the character of Beast. Barnard was discovered during the West End production of Spring Awakening.  Bower is said to be out of contention due to a broken ankle.

    Actresses in line for the role of the female lead – the Princess:

  • Adelaide Kane – Power Rangers R.P.M., Neighbours
  • Lily Collins – The Blind Side, Priest, Abduction
  • Juno Temple – Year One, Kaboom, Greenberg,  Atonement, and Paul WS Anderson's upcoming 3D adaptation of The Three Musketeers

    • The report also mentions that the studio is asking for a eight or nine-month commitment, which is a lot of time for a film production.

    Academy Award-winning screenwriter and Singer-collaborator Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) did a late rewrite on the script. The original script was written by Lost (the indie film, not the TV show) scribe Darren Lemke, with a re-write by Live Free or Die Hard/Race to Witch Mountain writer Mark Bomback. DJ Caruso was originally attached to direct.

    This project prevented Singer from directing X-Men: First Class. 20th Century Fox loves the Jamie Moss script, written from Singer's treatment, and is pushing the film into production now without him at the helm. Casting is just now gearing up, and production is scheduled to begin Summer 2010 in England.

    The original "Jack and the Beanstalk" fairy tale centered around a boy who exchanged a cow for magical beans. After the beans grew into a gigantic beanstalk, Jack climbed it to find a huge house with a giant living inside it, which Jack then began to pilfer. The story ends with Jack killing the giant in self-defense, kind of. A variation on the story, "Jack the Giant Killer," has Jack venturing into a land of giants and slaying them in increasingly gruesome ways. The new film is a combination of the two.

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