Update: the story has been proven wrong by Variety, but Brühl may still yet have a role in the film, see below for more info on that character.
Ah, we were just about to leave for the weekend. It appears that German actor Daniel Brühl has not only been officially cast in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards,” it looks like he just might be playing the main villain Colonel Hans Landa. Wait, him? He’s too handsome and young to be playing someone so nefarious and Machiavellian, no?
Brühl, who gained attention for his roles in “Goodbye Lenin” and “The Edukators,” told a local German paper the Berliner Kurier (via the Tarantino Archives) that he nabbed the role.
The story is hard to translate, but it reads like he out bested Leo DiCaprio (who was never really in contention), Gedeon Burkhard and Til Schweiger (another German actor who was in talks with Quentin) for the role of Landa, the “Jew hunter” and ruthless SS German Nazi Colonel (the paper says the “ice-cold SS-officer” but that’s likely him). Apparently he’s also “scared stiff” about the daunting role, but said working with Tarantino is a like “childhood dream.”
We still would have pegged him for the role of the handsome young, German soldier Fredrick Zoller, personally, but the international casting of this film is much more exciting than the American names that have come up frankly, so we’ll take it and shut up.
Meanwhile at the Venice Film festival German actress Diane Kruger (“The Hunting Party,” “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”) said she’s been asked to appear in the film too. “I just received a call from Quentin Tarantino, asking me to be in his next movie,” Kruger told the press at the Lido. “I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ll play a German movie star.”
That can only be one character in the script, Bridget Von Hammersmark, the German actress/ undercover British spy. If Quentin is calling Kruger for the role, this also must mean that Nastassja Kinski is out of the picture now because according to the Hollywood trades, she was originally the one in talks to play the only German actress.
Maybe Tarantino’s been watching the 2005 French/German WWII movie “Joyeux Noël” which starred both Brühl and Kruger. Could be, right?
