With filming set to start soon, Danny Boyle is putting the finishing touches on his cast for the true life survival story “127 Hours.”
Lizzy Caplan (“Party Down,” “Cloverfield”) has revealed while doing press rounds for “Hot Tub Time Machine” that she has joined the film and will be playing Aron Ralston’s sister. The film, which features James Franco in the lead role, is about an American mountain climber whose arm became trapped under a boulder while in Blue John Canyon in Utah. Fighting hunger and dehydration, Ralston made the decision to amputate his own arm in order to survive. Caplan joins the previously announced Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn in the film.
Given that the majority of the film will be centered around Ralston’s ordeal on the mountain, scenes involving family members and hikers he meets on the trailer we’re guessing will be shot in flashback. Boyle has also come up with the clever idea of using two cinematographers on the project — Anthony Dod Mantle (“28 Days Later”) and Enrique Chediak (“28 Weeks Later”) — to help add some visual verve to the film.
Fox Searchlight previously earmarked the film as their Oscar contender for the 2011 ceremonies so expect production on this one to move quickly.
Update: Collider’s Matt Goldberg reports Caplan revealed that her character will appear as a hallucination, which leads one to believe that Mara and Tamblyn’s characters might also appear in hallucinations during Ralston’s ordeal. Caplan says, “most of the movie is James Franco stuck in a cave, but he has hallucinations, so there are other characters besides himself. And a boulder.” Hopefully that boulder will not receive a name, a la Wilson in “Castaway”
