Breathe easy, Harry Potter fans; it looks like Daniel Radcliffe will be able to keep up the mortgage payments on that small South American country he bought a while back, despite the end of the franchise that made his name. The actor has lined up a Broadway run in ace musical “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying” next year, and an adaptation of classic novel “All Quiet On The Western Front” for 2012, but it looks like he’s going to sneak in a high-profile role this year by taking the lead in the ghost story “The Woman In Black.”
We reported a while back that Michael Fassbender was the producers’ first choice for the role, with Colin Farrell also in contention, but with the German-Irish actor taking on parts in “X-Men: First Class” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” and Farrell’s schedule equally busy, Hammer Films have decided to skew a little younger and go with 20-year-old Radcliffe for the lead, a young lawyer who faces off against a malevolent ghost. Shock Till You Drop were the first to report the story, before it was confirmed by gossipmonger/terrible human being Perez Hilton (both via Bleeding Cool).
The film is set to be directed by James Watkins (“Eden Lake”) the film “follows a young lawyer, Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), who is ordered to travel to a remote corner of the UK and sort out a recently deceased client’s papers. As he works alone in an old and isolated house, Kipps begins to uncover its tragic secrets, and his unease grows when he discovers that the local village is held hostage by the ghost of a scorned woman set on vengeance.” The film will go in front of cameras this fall.
With a script from Jane Goldman (“Kick-Ass,” “Stardust”) this is certainly promising, and, like most of the cast bar Emma Watson, Radcliffe’s acting has improved exponentially as the “Harry Potter” series has gone on so we like him in the lead role. We’re worried about the film possibly being shot in 3D, as it could mean endless gimmicky three-dimensional jump scares, but we’re cautiously optimistic.
