While her sister was the one rumored for a part last fall (that eventually went to Rebecca Hall), the equally talented Kate Mara has found herself vaulted into one of the most intriguing movies on the 2014 horizon.
The actress has joined the solid cast of cinematographer Wally Pfister‘s directorial debut “Transcendence.” Mara, who has received the most exposure yet thanks to her excellent turn on David Fincher‘s “House Of Cards,” will join a lineup that includes the aforementioned Hall, Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany. Executive produced by Pfister’s pal Christopher Nolan (along with Emma Thomas and Aaron Ryder), the Black List script by Jack Paglen (one our Screenwriters On The Rise) plot revolves around an assassinated scientist who gets his brain uploaded to a computer.
It’s believed that Hall will play Evelyn, the fellow-scientist wife of Will (Depp) aka the guy who goes into the computer, and given that there were only two female roles of any significance in the script we read, it’s likely that Mara is Bree, one of a group of terrorists determined to stop the artificial intelligence project run by Depp & Hall’s characters, and introduced in the script as ‘the tattooed baker’ (it’s possible that the script’s changed, though, but everything else we’ve heard syncs up). Fun fact: Mara was once in the mix as one of the many contenders testing to play Selina Kyle in Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises.” Anyway, it’s a nice big blockbuster role for Mara and certainly a well-deserved career boost.
Principal photography is set to begin in April in Los Angeles. Warner Bros. will release the film on April 25, 2014 via its output deal with Alcon.