Aaron Eckhart will finally be elected president.
Casting news for one of the “White House in Jeopardy” movies! We have another president: Variety reports that Aaron Eckhart will play the commander in chief in “Olympus Has Fallen,” a film to be directed by Antoine Fuqua with Gerard Butler already set to star. (Interesting note: I’ve also seen this movie referred to as “White House Taken,” but can’t confirm a title change.)
It’s described as “Die Hard in the White House–it’s about “a former Secret Service agent who becomes America’s only hope when the White House is overtaken by terrorists.” As noted above, Eckhart will play the president and Butler will play the Secret Service agent.
This, of course, is not to be confused with “White House Down,” which is also described as “Die Hard in the White House,” and is about an attack on the White House by terrorists, with a Secret Service agent America’s only hope. That one’s directed by Roland Emmerich, with Jamie Foxx as the president and Channing Tatum as the Secret Service agent. Both movies are trying to start in late summer or early fall.
(Why does Hollywood so often have two ideas at the same time that they then have to rush into production in order to beat each other? I don’t know, though light plagiarism and too much talk about ideas for scripts certainly is a possibility.)
Eckhart’s always had that politician look about him, so it’s about time that he ascended to our nation’s highest office. He’ll next be seen in September in “The Expatriate” and has “I, Frankenstein” ready for early 2013. He’s also set to star in “The Drummer,” the Dennis Wilson biopic that needs a better title.
