Plenty of films about to be put into production have had a slow burn, meant to add cast members one by one until the film was completed. Not Steven Spielberg and his latest, the biopic of U.S President Abraham Lincoln entitled Lincoln, according to Deadline Hollywood.
Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hal Holbrook, James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Bruce McGill and Joseph Cross have all been announced as being in negotiations for the film. Daniel Day-Lewis has already been cast as the 16th President of the United States.
Jones will play Thaddeus Stevens, a member of the House of Representatives who wrote the legislation that funded the Civil War. Gordon-Levitt will play Robert Todd Lincoln, the eldest son of the President and only one to live past his teenage years. The others did not have roles announced and are presumed to be in supporting roles.
The film will be based off the novel “Team of Rivals” by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and the screenplay has been written by Academy Award nominated writer Tony Kushner. Kushner and Spielberg previously collaborated on Munich, for which Kushner was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
What does this mean? Steven Spielberg already has a pair of Oscars for Best Director and has won virtually every award there is. Usually when directors load up their cast they tend to be aiming directly for an Oscar that validates their career but Spielberg is just up to what he usually does: making another great film. It’s going to be interesting to see how this ends up playing out because with a cast this talented and a prior working relationship with his writer Spielberg is set up for a potential third Oscar win.
