Rising ‘Twilight’ Star Xavier Samuel To Star As Male Lead
After starring in the embarrassing TIFF-opening “Score: A Hockey Musical“, iconic “Grease” star Olivia Newton-John has now also joined Stephan Elliott‘s latest project, the road trip comedy “A Few Best Men.”
The film is being backed by the writing and producing team behind the original British version of “Death At A Funeral,” Dean Craig, Laurence Malkin and Share Stallings, and will follow the story of a “young groom and his three best men who travel to the Australian outback for a destination wedding that is as funny as it is disastrous.” Newton-John playing the mother of the bride with Xavier Samuel (“The Twilight Saga: Eclipse“) starring as the British groom alongside Kris Marshall, Kevin Bishop, Laura Brent, Tim Draxl, Steve Le Marquand, Regel Wilson and Jonathan Biggins.
“I’m thrilled Olivia Newton-John is part of the cast,” fellow producer Gary Hamilton announced. “Craig has written a fantastically entertaining script, and it’s especially exciting to partner Stephan Elliott with Olivia who is a true music and film icon. Olivia will be playing a role that will show her in a light she’s never been seen in before and it’s going to turn heads and win new fans.”
The film will be Elliott’s first film since 2008’s Jessica Biel-starrer “Easy Virtue” but the director is perhaps best known as the helmer of cult favorite “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” which starred Terence Stamp, Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving as a trio of traveling drag queens — a tale which is currently being brought to Broadway.
Filming on “A Few Best Men” is set to begin in Sydney and the NSW Blue Mountains next week; it’s not known if previous plans to shoot in the Australian state of Queensland were hampered by recent, disastrous flooding.
