Joel Edgerton, practicing some Tom Buchanan-ish menace.
Deadline (and undoubtedly others) reports that Joel Edgerton has been cast as Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann’s inexplicably 3D version of “The Great Gatsby.” Leonardo DiCaprio is playing the title role, Carey Mulligan is his elusive love Daisy Buchanan, Tobey Maguire is Nick Carraway, the narrator/newcomer to the posh Long Island estates where it all takes place. Elizabeth Debicki will play Jordan Baker, a friend of the Buchanans, who becomes Nick’s sort of love interest, and Isla Fisher will play Myrtle, the wife of a garage owner who is Tom’s mistress.
Ben Affleck was reportedly close to taking the role of Buchanan, but the filming clashed with his next directorial effort, “Argo” (he’s also starring in that one).
Buchanan is supposed to be a brutish, overprivileged former Yale football player. As noted, he’s married to the beautiful (but really, kind of empty) Daisy, but has his working class mistress, Myrtle, on the side. He’s not a nice guy.
Edgerton, an Australian like Luhrmann and Debicki, has been almost cast in several big Hollywood productions, but hasn’t quite gotten there; reportedly he was director/writer Tony Gilroy’s first choice for the Bourne Reinvention, but the studio didn’t think he was a big enough name or young enough to take over the franchise. This part should put him up with some of the close-to-A-listers. Luhrmann, at least, is enthusiastic:
“In casting Tom one had to find an actor who could credibly be (as Fitzgerald describes him) ‘one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven,’ had five-star acting chops and in the big dramatic showdown scenes between Gatsby and Tom, hold the screen against Leonardo DiCaprio, in the appropriate age group. Any wonder, it has been a long and thorough journey. The simple truth is that Joel came into our rehearsal space in New York and fulfilled all of the above criteria, and then some.”
Edgerton will next be seen in “Warrior,” with Tom Hardy.
