It has been officially confirmed that Charlie Hunnam (TV’s Sons of Anarchy) will star in the upcoming movie The Lost City of Z, accepting the role previously filled by Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game, The Hobbit). Cumberbatch chose to leave the project once he was offered the lead role as Dr. Stephen Strange in Marvel’s new Dr. Strange.
The Lost City of Z is a dramatic true story chronicling British explorer Col. Percival “Percy” Fawcett who, in 1925, embarked on a hunt for a mythological city deep within the Amazonian jungle – a hunt from which he never returned. Sienna Miller (American Sniper, Foxcatcher) and Robert Pattinson (The Twilight Saga, Maps to the Stars) have also been cast in the movie.
Having acted in small roles in movies like Cold Mountain and Children of Men, Hunnam is making strides in his film career, most recently starring as jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket in Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim (which is reportedly due for a sequel). With the hit television show Sons of Anarchy drawing to a close, Hunnam’s presence in Hollywood is already beginning to spike.
On top of The Lost City of Z, the actor has also signed onto Guy Ritchie’s Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur (due in 2016) as the titular character, as well as the nearly completed Del Toro horror flick Crimson Peak. Hunnam’s consistently packed filming schedule is ultimately the reason why he notoriously quit Fifty Shades of Grey only months after signing onto the project.
According to an interview with Moviefone, Hunnam explains how his snowballing film career became overwhelmingly stressful around the time of the Fifty Shades contract agreement, which also conflicted with his Sons of Anarchy shooting schedule:
I was going to finish Sons at like 11 p.m. Friday night, get on the plane Saturday morning to Vancouver for Fifty, missing the whole first week of rehearsal and start shooting Monday morning. And I was going to shoot that film, wrap that on the Wednesday and the following Monday I was going to start shooting Crimson Peak in Toronto. I just had like … frankly, something of a nervous breakdown.”
Finishing up the series finale of Sons of Anarchy, a show that enjoyed a 6-year run, will no doubt give Hunnam the space in his production calendar needed to devote to his fast-growing movie career.
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