Update: Unfortunately, Robert De Niro, Oscar Isaac, Donald Sutherland, and Cate Blanchett had to drop out due to COVID-19 issues. The final principal cast is Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins, and Jeremy Strong.
Original report as follows…
Even though the film might not have been the blockbuster that the studio was hoping for (given its inflated budget), James Gray’s sci-fi epic “Ad Astra” is still one of the best films of last year and definitely deserves the attention of film fans. But that film was carried by the performance of one person—Brad Pitt. And for Gray’s next feature, “Armageddon Time,” it appears as if the filmmaker has decided to bring in just about every great actor working today.
According to Deadline, Gray’s next feature, “Armageddon Time,” will feature a cast that includes Robert De Niro, Oscar Isaac, Donald Sutherland, and Anne Hathaway. Those folks are joining the already-announced Cate Blanchett in the period New York City drama. Unlike his previously mentioned sci-fi film, “Armageddon Time,” is a much smaller-scale drama based on the filmmaker’s own childhood growing up in the era right before Ronald Reagan became President and leader of the free world. Before this monster cast was announced, one of the more interesting aspects of the film is that Donald Trump’s father is set to be a character in the feature.
In regards to that portion of the film, which focuses on a private school that was attended by the Trump clan, the filmmaker told Deadline, “The private school, yes Donald Trump went there and Fred Trump was on the board of trustees. It’s symbolic about what the school represented at the time, entrenched in this white protestant ethic. I found it very foreign to me, a product of the public school system in New York City of the ‘70s. It’s about that transition and how it reflects on what the American society was and sadly still is. How we are separated along the lines of class and ethnicity. The film is really about that, my transition in school from one to the other. The implications of it are quite large. The world really became clearly divided to me, based on the haves and the have-nots. I didn’t write the script last week, but rather many months ago and it’s weird in that a lot of what we’re seeing right now is playing out of many of the themes that it was my ambition to explore in the first place. This obsession I have with examining American ideas of class mobility, to do it in a context that is humane with social impact.”
Gray also explained that he hopes that the film is “political and historic” but filled with “love and warmth,” as the focus is still on the young kids at the center of the story.
“What happened with me, very simply, I got in big trouble when I was around 11, though the boys are 12 in the movie, and the story is about my movement from the public education that I got into private school and a world of privilege,” said the filmmaker. “This film is about what that meant for me and how lucky I was, and how unlucky my friend was and about that break meant for me and what it meant for him.”
With a cast as stacked as this and a filmmaker telling a story that is clearly very personal, it’s hard not to be excited about “Armageddon Time’.” Let’s just hope it hits theaters sooner rather than later.
