Breaking. Michael Fassbender has joined Noomi Rapace as the second official star of Ridley Scott‘s “Prometheus.” Fassbender’s devastating turn in the 2008 drama “Hunger” still keeps paying dividends for the 34-year-old of German/Irish descent. After smaller 2009 turns in “Inglourious Basterds,” and “Jonah Hex,” plus the lead in “Centurion,” Fassbender’s career has finally hit top speed in the last six months landing the lead in “X-Men: First Class,” a coveted part in Steven Soderbergh‘s “Haywire,” and now a major spot in Ridley Scott’s sci-film that was once set to be a prequel to his 1979 classic “Alien,” but now seems to have morphed into something entirely different though seemingly still within that universe (it is said to have “Alien DNA” within it, but loglines are being kept under wraps).
Just this afternoon, “Prometheus” moved from a March 2012 bow to a much higher-profile summer sched spot on June 8, 2012. Fassbender had been rumored to be a part of the cast — along with Charlize Theron, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Arterton, James Franco and several other actors no longer actively involved in discussions (like Natalie Portman) — for months and it appears those long, back and forth talks finally materialized into something concrete.
Franco is surely out with his nutty schedule, but Charlize Theron is still in talks. Ironically, a role that Fassbender might have starred in with Theron — Universal’s “Snow White and the Huntsman” — is now one that he is completely out of thanks to aligning himself with Ridley Scott. There’s been some talk that Angelina Jolie could take a role in this picture too, but we never really bought that and it remains to be seen (when was the last time Jolie took an ensemble film where she was the big bad star?). Damon Lindelof penned the script and he also did rewrites on the old “Alien” prequel that Jon Spaihts originally wrote. While it’s not entirely clear why the “Alien” prequel became “Prometheus” it appears they just could not crack the script and the brainstorming eventually turned into something unique.
“While ‘Alien’ [the original film] was indeed the jumping off point for this project, out of the creative process evolved a new, grand mythology and universe in which this original story takes place. The keen fan will recognize strands of ‘Alien’s DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, large and provocative,” Scott said in a statement a few short weeks ago. [THR]
