British actress Anna Friel has joined the cast of Neil Burger’s “The Dark Fields” which is underway and was shooting in Manhattan this past weekend.
The cast already stars Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Robert De Niro, and seems to have a noir-ish, semi-sci-fi kind of bent. The picture centers on a writer (Cooper) whose dependency on a designer “viagra for the brain” drug — which makes one more intelligent — hits a stumbling block when his stocks dwindle and dangerous side-effects affect his sanity. The writer must then venture into the drug’s dark past to feed his habit all while suffering the drug’s side effects of sanity-splitting headaches, spontaneous blackouts and violent outbursts. De Niro will play financial mogul pursuing Cooper while Cornish role is still unknown, presumably a love interest for Cooper (and last week SplashOnline and Vulture revealed photos of Cornish running for her life through Manhattan being chased by another actor).
In a way it sounds — and looks — a little like Matt Damon’s “The Adjustment Bureau” in that the actors appear to be in the here and now (certainly via costuming), but clearly no drug like this exists. Perhaps both are set in very near future.
Friel who is known in the U.S. for her roles on the TV show, “Pushing Daisies,” the feature film “Land of the Lost,” will play Cooper’s ex-wife in the film. She has upcoming roles in Woody Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” and screenwriter William Monahan’s directorial debut “London Boulevard” starring Keira Knightley and Colin Farrell.
Burger’s previous films include the decent pictures, “The Illusionist” starring Ed Norton and “The Lucky Ones” starring Rachel McAdams. Universal will distribute the picture via Relativity Media’s Rogue Pictures that is doing the same with “McGruber” via Universal later this Spring.
