Vanessa Redgrave, David Thewlis & Rhys Ifans Join Roland Emmerich's 'Anonymous', Columbia Pictures Sued Over '2012'

Since making his US debut with “Joey” in 1985, Roland Emmerich’s career has been marked almost entirely with sci-fi and explosions – even the closest thing he’s made to a real-world drama, “The Patriot,” was stacked with explosions and CGI cannonballs. So it marks a real shift that he’s gearing up to shoot “Anonymous,” a period thriller examining the so-called ‘Oxfordian theory’ that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was behind the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare.

The first casting for the project was announced a month or so ago, with up-and-coming British actor Edward Hogg (“White Lightnin”, “Bunny and the Bull”) taking the role of Robert Cecil, a senior advisor and spymaster to Queen Elizabeth. Now, Emmerich’s talked to Empire, and revealed more casting, as well as new details on the project.

David Thewlis (“Naked”) will play William Cecil, Robert’s father, (Richard Attenborough played the part in Shekhar Kapur’s “Elizabeth”) while Vanessa Redgrave will play Queen Elizabeth, and Rhys Ifans will play De Vere himself. Emmerich suggests that the film is something of an ensemble piece, with “12 main characters and 20 or 30 other characters.” It also sounds like it’ll span a long time period, as the director reveals that Thewlis’ character will appear in both young and old guises.

He tells the site that the film is “a mix of a lot of things: it’s an historical thriller because it’s about who will succeed Queen Elizabeth and the struggle of the people who want to have a hand in it. It’s the Tudors on one side and the Cecils on the other, and in between is the Queen. Through that story we tell how the plays written by the Earl of Oxford ended up labelled ‘William Shakespeare.’

With a cast and scope this large, it’s certainly an ambitious project, and with anyone else other than Emmerich at the helm, we’d be fairly excited (even if we don’t buy Oxfordian theory for a second – it seems like revisionism, born from the idea that only an aristocrat could write Shakespeare’s work). As it is, we hope that, away from green screens and with a solid cast, that Emmerich can pull through, but we’re not holding our breath.

In related, and somewhat odd news, the Brazilian Catholic Church is suing Columbia Pictures over the destruction of the Christ the Redeemer statue in “2012.” That’s right – they’re suing over the fake destruction of statue.

It turns out that the archdiocese of Rio de Janiero owns and manages the copyright to the famous statue (we didn’t know Jesus Christ needed a copyright manager, but we digress) and apparently, filmmakers need to seek approval before shooting the statue for their film. The archdiocese had actually turned down Columbia Pictures’ request to destroy the landmark, but they did it anyway. They have been trying to reach a settlement with the studio since December to no avail and are now seeking unspecified damages and a public statement from the studio that they did not intend to offend people. Though if they want to sue over “2012” offending people, we think people running from terrible green screen is the far more egregious crime here. -additional reporting by Kevin Jagernauth