Just a few weeks ago, it was announced that Christoph Waltz had joined the Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson depression-era romance, “Water For Elephants.”
What wasn’t reported then, and that Deadline reports today is that by taking that role, Waltz effectively had to drop out of David Cronenberg’s forthcoming “The Talking Cure” leaving producers scrambling to find a replacement for the film that is set to start shooting on May 17th.
Well, the story has a happy ending as the equally awesome Viggo Mortensen is set to team up with Cronenberg for their third collaboration, replacing the departed Waltz in the role of Sigmund Freud. The film is based on the Christopher Hampton play and follows the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, and their complicated relationships with a brilliant and beautiful patient, Sabina Spielrein. Mortensen joins Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender who will be playing Spielrein and Jung respectively.
Production was originally slated to take place in Germany, and we imagine that’s still the case. The film will shoot for ten weeks, which likely means a 2011 release. Either way, the cast is top notch and we can’t wait to see how Cronenberg plumbs the depths of Freud and Jung.
This sounds amazing! I can't wait to see how Cronenberg, Mortensen, Fassbender and Knightly play this. As a man as complicated as Freud, we could be looking at a Best Actor nod for Mortensen…Oscar loves a biopic..
The French distributors Mars Films on their Facebook page are reporting that Vincent Cassel has joined the cast.
If memory serves me right the role of Jung is more the male lead in the play.
I hope that Waltz didn't leave over the pay cheques involved that would be rather sad!
From their FB page
Le casting de THE TALKING CURE le prochain film de David Cronenberg a été annoncé Viggo Mortensen et Michael Fassbender joueront respectivement Sigmund Freud et Carl Jung, accompagnés de Keira Knightley et Vincent Cassel
nice, got a link?
Didn't know I could post links
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=353444922286&id=357400246037
Hope that helps
I love Cronenberg and Viggo is a favourite of mine, on my scale equivalent to Montgomery Clift who played Freud long ago. That one might've ended up on public domain but it's good cinema nevertheless and a brilliant performance too.
As I thought Waltz's utterly great performance in IB deserved all the praise it got and more, I've enjoyed following his new H'wood career over the past few months. So the news is a big letdown.
Francis Lawrence over David Cronenberg?
A third consecutive villain role over Sigmund Freud?
cool casting
I just love Christoph and Michael, and was greatly looking forward to this movie. From what I read awhile back, Michael was really pleased with the opportunity to work with him again. We don't know what happened here, but I hope we don't see Christoph getting type cast, as another post had suggested, especially with the "Green Hornet" coming soon. I haven't heard any news on that one, though.