Variety are reporting that Brendan Fraser has taken the lead role in upcoming comedy heist Whole Lotta Sole. The film will be directed by Terry George, who directed and co-wrote Hotel Rwanda and Reservation Road, and produced by Jay Russell, who produced and directed The Water Horse and family-film My Dog Skip (starring a very young Frankie Muniz).
The film currently has an approximate budget of .5 million, and will be filmed in Northern Ireland, where George is from. The plot revolves around:
“A young man robbing a fish shop in order to pay off a gambling debt; the heist goes terribly – and humorously – awry when it turns into a hostage situation.”
Fraser will be playing the role of the shopkeeper, who is on the run from his gangster father-in-law. Fraser’s career in the past few years seems not to have demonstrated his true potential, which we have seen in the likes of Crash, The Mummy, and The Air I Breathe – not a particularly well-known film, but an excellent film nonetheless, in which Fraser is at his best.
The plot, itself, may not sound exceptional, but I think a George-Fraser combination, if both are working at their best, could certainly raise it beyond initial expectations. George’s past films have had a tendency to be much more serious than Whole Lotta Sole sounds, so it will be interesting to see if this is a complete tangent from his past work, or if the comedic elements will be part of a bigger picture.
Also cast so far in the film is Academy Award-nominee Sophie Okonedo, who starred in George’s Hotel Rwanda, and fellow North Ireland actor Martin McCann, who had a recurring role in recent TV mini-series The Pacific and will star in the upcoming film Killing Bono, which is to be the late Pete Postlethwaite’s final film.
No firm release date has yet been announced. More when we get it.
