There is no greater arthouse bromance right now than the one between director Steve McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender. The duo first paired up on “Hunger,” which brought them both some considerable attention, and this year they are dominating the fall movie chatter with the NC-17 sex-addiction drama “Shame.” They’ve already lined up their next collaboration, “Twelve Years A Slave,” which also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, and now one of the biggest actors in the world is lining up to join them.
Brad Pitt, who is producing the film via his Plan B shingle, and has been developing the project for years, is taking a role as well. It can be easy to confuse which films the actor is producing or starring in — or both — however, this news cropped up in a recent Screen Daily report about the project, and Plan B told us that the trade story was accurate, though they could not provide any further details.
Co-written by McQueen and John Ridley (”Bobby,” “Three Kings”), the movie is based on the 1853 autobiography written by Solomon Northup, a free black man who was tricked into slavery. Educated, married and living in New York, Northup was lured by a job offer in Washington only to be kidnapped and put in a slave pen, leading to years of enslavement under various owners. He finally earned back his freedom when a white Canadian carpenter who opposed slavery smuggled letters to Northup’s wife, which helped launch a court case that eventually set him free.
River Road is now on board to co-produce, with Summit International to handle sales at the American Film Market next month. This will mark another team up between Pitt and the two companies following Terrence Malick‘s “The Tree Of Life.” Filming is slated to begin in 2012.