Karen Gillan Joins 'The Circle' With Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, And John Boyega

The cast of The Circle, from The Spectacular Now director James Ponsoldt, continues to expand in intriguing ways. The lineup already features Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and John Boyega playing characters based on Dave Eggers' satirical novel about an ambitious tech company.

Now Karen Gillan, who we know from Doctor Who and have seen in the last year in Selfie, 7 Days in Hell, and Guardians of the Galaxy, will play a fourth major character in The Circle. 

Deadline has the news, saying that Gillan will play "Annie, a warm, cute, goofy, old-money confident and fiercely intelligent member of The Circle." What is the Circle, exactly? For more, let's go to our prior report on the film, from when John Boyega signed on.

In Eggers' novel, The Circle is basically a hyper-accelerated mash-up of Google and Apple. Boyega plays the company's "boy-wonder visionary," while Emma Watson is a new employee named Mae, who sets things in motion, and Tom Hanks plays a mysterious older man. While some criticism was thrown at the novel for being a bit arch, this cast combined with Ponsoldt has us really interested in the movie.

Here's the book jacket account of the novel:

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users' personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company's modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can't believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman's ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.