"Man, that Michael Shannon guy is really over-exposed. He shouldn't be in so many movies", said no person ever in history. There can never be too much of the guy, and already this year we've seen him in Midnight Special, as "The King" in Elvis & Nixon, and in 'Batman v Superman' as the corpse of General Zod. Not only that but he's been all over the festival circuit with Frank & Lola, Nocturnal Animals, Wolves, Loving, and Werner Herzog's Salt and Fire. Sheesh. And yet it's still not enough, and fortunately Shannon has signed on for two new projects with big co-stars.
First up, it looks like Shannon is stepping in for his Nocturnal Animals co-star Jake Gyllenhaal in The Current War. The period drama stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison and tells of his infamous feud with George Westinghouse (Shannon) in the 1880s to supply the first stable current. Edison was in favor of direct current (DC) while Westinghouse and others were in favor of alternating current (AC) for power distribution.
Exciting? Maybe not on paper, but with Cumberbatch and Shannon, plus director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) it promises to be electric, no pun intended.
Meanwhile, Shannon will also join Chris Hemsworth for Horse Soldiers, the long-developing film that producer Jerry Bruckheimer has been trying to launch for years. Well he' finally got it off the ground with Nicolai Fuglsig making his feature directorial debut. Based on Doug Stanton's book and penned by Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) and Peter Craig (The Town) , the film tells the true story of an elite Special Forces unit that entered Afghanistan post-9/11, battling the Taliban on horseback. After taking back the important city of Mazar-i-Sharif and being treated as heroes, the squad was ambushed and had to fight to survive against overwhelming odds.
Neither project has a firm start date but you can bet both will be trying to move as quickly as possible. [THR/Deadline]
