Four movies into his career, and there are certain things we’ve come to expect from Ben Wheatley movies. Eerie sound design, for instance. A generally unsettling mood. A jet-black sense of humor. Top-notch filmmaking. Above all else, a head getting smashed into smithereens at one point or another. One running motif that hasn’t yet appeared in Wheatley’s work, but which looks to make an appearance in his next film? Very handsome British men.
Having wrapped up his work directing the first two episodes of the new season of “Doctor Who,” Wheatley is currently prepping one of our most anticipated films of 2015, his adaptation of J.G. Ballard‘s “High Rise.” As was announced a few months back, the project will star “The Avengers” breakout Tom Hiddleston in the lead role, but it looks like he’s getting some added company, as the reliable Baz Bamigboye reports that Luke Evans has come on board the project as well.
Welsh actor Evans broke out a few years back in “Tamara Drewe,” and went on to bigger and better things by playing the villain in “Fast & Furious 6” last summer, and then going more heroic as Bard The Bowman in “The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug,” and will next be seen as the title role in Universal’s “Dracula Untold,” which lands this fall.
The film’s set in a dystopian society, in a huge tower block, into which Hiddleston’s doctor Robert Laing moves, and which soon finds itself bitterly divided along class lines, as all morality and society collapses into squalor and violence. There’s no word as to who Evans will be playing, but he joins Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller and “The Following” star James Purefoy, who also recently came on board the project. Shooting gets underway very soon in Northern Ireland, so we hope this’ll be ready in time for Cannes next year.