Be honest, when you first saw Channing Tatum struttin' his stuff in Step Up you thought he'd just be another lunkhead actor only good for taking his shirt off. Right? So he's done a fair share of that, there's no denying that Tatum has branched out to become a solid, dependable actor. So much so that some of today's best filmmakers seek him out, such as Steven Soderbergh who has worked with him twice already. Tatum's not done by a long shot, and now he'll get to work another Oscar nominated director in Bennett Miller(Capote).
Last month it was revealed that Miller, still riding high on the success of his baseball pic, Moneyball, had snared Steve Carell to star in Foxcatcher. The film is based on the life of John Du Pont(Carell), a prominent multimillionaire and paranoid schizophrenic, who built a training facility for Olympic athletes on his Pennsylvania estate. One of his closest friends was freestyle wrestler Dave Schultz(Tatum), but in 1996 du Pont suddenly shot and killed him. Du Pont believed Schultz to be part of a conspiracy to kill him. Weird, eh? The script is by Dan Futterman and E. Max Frye, both of whom worked with Miller on Capote.
Another bold choice for Tatum, who has been able to jump seamlessly between silly comedic stuff and heavy drama. He's got a number of films on the way, like the ensemble comedy Ten Year(which he also produced), the 21 Jump Street remake, Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike(based on Tatum's own life), and he'll be seen in January in Soderbergh's espionage thriller, Haywire. [24 Frames]
