Blake Lively, best known for her role as Serena van der Woodsen in The CW’s hit TV show Gossip Girl, has taken the lead female role of Ophelia in the upcoming Oliver Stone crime thriller, Savages, Variety reports.
The ever impressive John Travolta has also signed on for the film, taking the role of a DEA agent.
Naturally, Travolta is capable of pretty much any role you throw at him, and his casting is great news for me. His role as the cop in Face/Off, alongside Nicolas Cage as the antagonist, made the film one of my all-time favourites, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he can pull off a DEA agent to perfection.
Though I know a lot of people look down a bit on Gossip Girl, I personally think both the writing and the cast’s performances are superb, and in my eyes, Lively is one of the finest young actresses working at the moment. I think that it’s great news she’s looking to star in more and more films when Gossip Girl isn’t filming, because she’s a brilliant actress. Her role in The Town, Ben Affleck’s immense film of last year, demonstrated she’s not afraid to try things outside of her comfort zone. Being now cast in Stone’s next film as the free-spirited shared girlfriend and confidante of two guys running a marijuana operation out of Laguna Beach sounds like an excellent choice with which to expand her horizons.
There’s simply no question that Oliver Stone is an incredible director, a visionary of the past few decades. His films have earned a total of nine Academy Awards, and over thirty nominations, with him at the helm, with Stone himself taking two for Best Director (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July) and one for Best Adapted Screenplay (Midnight Express).
The film is based on the 2010 novel of the same name, written by Don Winslow, who is scripting the film with Shane Salerno. The film,
“follows two Laguna Beach marijuana kingpins forced to work for a Mexican drug cartel after Ophelia, the free-spirited girlfriend they share, is kidnapped.”
Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass) and Taylor Kitsch (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) are in talks to play the two male leads, with Benicio del Toro closing in on a role as part of the Mexican drug cartel.
Savages will be Stone’s first film after last year’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the sequel to his very popular 1987 original, and it sounds like Stone has certainly got the potential to have a great film with Savages. As it looks now, the cast and the story both have great promise, so it all sounds good so far. I’m hoping that it will be yet another chance for Lively to bolster her already successful movie career. She’ll be starring in this summer’s blockbuster, Green Lantern (out on 17th June), and is currently filming Hick, alongside Chloë Moretz, Rory Culkin, and Alec Baldwin. If her performances to date are anything to go by, she’ll be excellent in them all.
