Ensemble Takes Shape for Coen Brothers’ ‘Hail, Caesar!’

Exciting developments are in the early stages for the forthcoming comedy Hail, Caesar!, the latest project from brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.  The period film, set in 1950s era Hollywood, has already surfaced as a hot property since it features George Clooney alongside fellow Coen alum Josh Brolin.  And since it just wouldn’t be a Coen Brothers movie without a colorful group of characters, The Hollywood Reporter unveiled today that Channing Tatum, Tilda Swinton, and Ralph Fiennes will be joining in on the fun as well. 

In the film Clooney stars as Eddie Mannix, a “fixer” for the rich and famous of the Hollywood elite .  Tatum is being courted to play the role of an actor, described in the “Gene Kelly” vein, while Fiennes is set to portray Laurence Lorenz, a studio director; both actors are Coen newbies.  Swinton (who worked with the Coens on the 2008 caper Burn After Reading) is set to play a gossip columnist.  The film looks to hark back and wink at the Golden Age of Hollywood, while likely skewering in it the process – since no Coen Brother feature is simply what it appears to be at face value (the filmmakers already played the Hollywood satire game with their 1991 feature Barton Fink, which earned the Palme d’Or at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival).

Out of group, the inclusion of Tatum is perhaps the most eyebrow-raising, yet the actor (currently on movie screens in 22 Jump Street) has been shrewdly balancing work of both the commercial and artistic variety.  He co-stars in Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher (which premiered to rave reviews and early awards talk at the Cannes Film Festival last May) and follows that up with lead role in the sci-fi mind bender Jupiter Ascending from Andy and Lana Wachowski.  Afterward, Tatum is expected to play Gambit in X-Men: Apocalypse and will star and co-write Magic Mike XXL, sequel to his 2012 stripper film.  Fiennes was last featured in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, for which he received raves and sparked early awards talk – that film also featured Swinton, and the two actors will again share the screen in an upcoming film from I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino before Hail, Caesar!.  Swinton, who shined in the vampire meditation Only Lovers Left Alive this spring, is also set to star in Snowpiercer (opening June 30th in limited release), Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem, and Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck opposite Amy Schumer.