Kristen Stewart (Still Alice) is currently in talks to join the cast of Oscar-winning (Brokeback Mountain) director Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, a film based on the 2012 best-selling Ben Fountain novel of the same name. The cast already consists of newcomer Joe Alwyn as the eponymous Billy Lynn along with Steve Martin (The Jerk) and Stewart’s former On The Road co-star Garrett Hedlund. Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) penned the script.
The fictional story centers on soldier Billy Lynn and his Bravo Squad serving in Iraq during the Bush administration. After taking part in an intense battle caught on tape by a war zone news crew, the Bravo Squad are briefly sent back to the States for a pro-war PR tour that climaxes at a highly publicized Thanksgiving Day football game. The movie’s timeline will mostly take place during this last day on the tour as Lynn struggles to reconcile his separate lives at home and as a soldier. Lee reportedly plans on using the innovative technology of the F65 camera, which, according to Variety, will “give audiences a better sense of the heightened sensation that soldiers feel on the battlefield and on the home front.” Stewart is reportedly up for the role of Billy’s sister Kathryn.
Stewart has several other projects ahead of her. She will star opposite Glenn Close (Dangerous Liasons) in Anesthesia, the sci-fi love story Equals with Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: Days of Future Past), American Ultra (her second comedy with Adventureland co-star Jesse Eisenberg), an untitled Kelly Reichardt project, and Woody Allen’s next film. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk begins filming in Atlanta this month.