This weekend on the Starz Network they'll begin re-airing Spartacus: Blood and Sand, one of my favorite shows of the last few years. While all of us who enjoyed it felt the sting of losing star Andy Whitfield so young into his budding career, it's also been great to see his co-star Jai Courtney break out into becoming a sought-after star on the big screen. After starring with Bruce Willis in A Good Day to Die Hard and Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher, Courtney has now joined the upcoming directorial projects by Angelina Jolie and Russell Crowe. So yep, he's definitely in high demand.
First up, Courtney will take part in Jolie's WWII drama, Unbroken, about former Olympian Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell), who survived a crash landing and being stranded at sea, only to endure terrible torture at a Japanese POW camp. He'll play Hugh ‘Cup’ Cuppernell, a fighter pilot who fought alongside Zamperini. Unbroken is slated to open on Christmas 2014.
From there he'll move into Russell Crowe's feature directing debut, The Water Diviner, which has him starring as a father who travels to Turkey to recover the bodies of his sons after the war in Gallipoli. Olga Kurylenko co-stars, and Courtney will play a "smart, efficient soldier tasked with organizing the effort to identify the tens of thousands of soldiers killed" in the fighting.
Courtney will be seen next in the YA adaptation, Divergent, opposite Shailene Woodley. [Deadline]
