Hollywoood may have shut down, and casting news may have eased up, but it remains a busy 2 weeks for Cate Blanchett. Just last week it was announced that she’s signed on to star in Eli Roth‘s adaptation of video game Borderlands, and this weeks brings Blanchett aboard two more high profile projects.
The first is James Gray‘s Armageddon Time. The film is set in Gray’s hometown of Queens, New York in the mid-1980s, and draws on the filmmaker’s own experiences at the Kew-Forest School, a private school where Fred Trump served on the board and Donald Trump was once a student. The school’s principal will reportedly be a central character, though it’s unclear what role Blanchett will tackle.
Gray is also penning the screenplay. Rodrigo Teixeira (Call Me By Your Name) will produce for RT Features, who also produced Gray’s Ad Astra. Whether the film will actually be shot in New York is debatable, as the city has become a hotbed for the coronavirus, so even after restrictions are lifted in many places the Big Apple might not be the home to as many film productions as it is custom to.
The second of Blanchett’s high profile projects is Adam McKay‘s sci-fi satire, Don’t Look Up. She’ll join Jennifer Lawrence in the Netflix film, which revolves around two mid-level astronomers who discover that a meteorite will destroy earth in six months, prompting them to go on a media tour to warn mankind.
McKay has described the movie as “a dark satire in the school of Wag The Dog, Doctor Strangelove and Network“. Assume the media tour within the film doesn’t go particularly well, then.
Netflix had planned to begin production in April in the hopes of setting the film up for an end-of-year awards run, but obviously that is no longer happening. We’ll wait and see when they hope to resume production. There is likely a tentative plan, as Blanchett wouldn’t sign on for all these new movies if she didn’t know at least a vague schedule.
Blanchett is one of the best actors of her generation, and already has two Oscars for The Aviator and Blue Jasmine. It’s possible she’s in the race once again for these two roles, while also leading a potential blockbuster in the form of Borderlands.
Oh, and she was also in the middle of filming Guillermo Del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley alongside Bradley Cooper, is attached to play Lucille Ball in Aaron Sorkin‘s Amazon movie Luci And Desi, and currently stars as Phyllis Schlafly in the FX series Mrs. America. That’s why she’s a movie star.
#Peace.Love.CateBlanchett
