Martin McDonagh’s latest crime drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri appears to be growing to epic proportions. The celebrated playwright and writer/director of cult favorites In Bruges (2008) and Seven Psychopaths (2012) – he also won an Oscar for directing the short film Six Shooter – has already enlisted “grade A” talent Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish and Caleb Landry Jones for his latest. Reportedly, Oscar nominated actor John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone), Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) and rising actor Lucas Hedges (Moonrise Kingdom) are joining the ensemble as well.
The film, being co-financed by Fox Searchlight and Film4, centers around Mildred Hayes (McDormand), a woman fed up with the police department in her small Missouri town following their negligence in solving the case of the murder of her daughter. In an effort to speed things along, she buys ad space on three local billboards calling out the police department. Harrelson and Rockwell are slated to the sheriff and his hotshot second-in-command, respectively. Cornish will portray Harrelson’s wife and Jones is slated to portray a billboard salesman. Hawke’s part appears to be that of Mildred Hayes’ ex-husband with Hedges portraying her son. Dinklage will play a man besotted with Mildred.
Hawkes recently was seen on screen in the indie Too Late and in Everest, which opened last fall. He was nominated for an Academy Award and earned an Independent Spirit Award for his performance in the 2010 indie Winter’s Bone and won an additional Independent Spirit Award for his acclaimed performance in 2012 bio The Sessions. Dinklage, an Emmy Award winning breakout from the HBO phenom Game of Thrones, can currently be seen in the Melissa McCarthy comedy The Boss and is currently filming the mystery Rememory. While still young, Hedges already has two Wes Anderson films under his belt (Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel) and has also appeared in Jason Reitman’s Labor Day and Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem. His next screen outing will be Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, a drama that has already earned widespread acclaim following its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is currently in pre-production and will likely come out sometime in 2017. We will stay tuned for details.
Leave a Comment