The rumours about who’s going to lead Quentin Tarantino’s next project, Django Unchained, have been going around for a few months now, and Deadline are reporting that the role has now all but been finalised with Jamie Foxx set to play Django.

Both Will Smith and Idris Elba had been rumoured to be circling the lead in Tarantino’s upcoming Spaghetti Western-esque film, but negotiations are now going to be getting underway to have Foxx fill the role in a film everyone should be looking forward to.

Tarantino has long since carved a niche for himself in the market, which he took to another level with the release of Inglourious Basterds in 2009, a film that had a rapturous reception, earned Christoph Waltz an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and took $320m. at the box office from a $70m. budget.

When he gets to work on a new project, fans and press alike get excited about it, and Django Unchained is no exception, garnering a lot of attention in the past few months. Tarantino is a director who seems to love working with the same actors and actresses across his films, and for that too, his next project is set to do the same, with Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson both set to star in Django Unchained.

Working with Tarantino for the first time will be Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin Candie, the lead antagonist in the film, a plantation and club owner, who allows the female slaves to be exploited for sex and pits the men to fight each other to the death. Whilst DiCaprio’s casting has been talked about as an unexpected choice, he has the potential to excel in the role. It’s something completely different to what we’re used to seeing him in, and I think we’re going to love to hate him in the film.

Like DiCaprio, Foxx will be working here with Tarantino for the first time. As much as I would have loved to see Will Smith take the lead on this film, Foxx is definitely an excellent choice too, and he’s shown in recent years that he’s capable of acting beyond what we might expect of most comedians, earning his Academy Award in the 2004 biopic, Ray. In the same year, he was also nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar for his role in Collateral opposite Tom Cruise; it’s not at all often we see an actor on both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor nominations lists at the Oscars, but Foxx managed it.

In Django Unchained, he’ll be playing Django,

“a slave who’s liberated by a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter and taught the tricks of the trade by his mentor. Django’s major goal in life is to recover his wife, and to do it he needs to get past the villainous ranch owner Calvin Candie (DiCaprio), who runs Candyland, a despicable club and plantation in Mississippi where female slaves are exploited as sex objects and males are pitted against each other in “mandingo”-style death matches. Candie is a slave’s worst nightmare, and that is where Django’s wife Broomhilda is an abused slave.”

Tarantino finished work on the script back in April, and production is now set to begin in November. Whilst it’s still very early to talk about possible awards for Tarantino’s next film, I think a lot of people would agree there’s a fair chance that it will be highly tipped for the Oscars when it’s released, and Foxx could well be earning at least another Best Actor nomination for the lead.

Previous articleFirst Official Image from Disney Pixar’s Brave
Next articleViva Riva! Review
Since graduating, I spend as much time as possible watching films/TV shows, reading books, and listening to music. So getting to write about what I love is nothing short of awesome. Biggest film-related hope for 2014/ever: Guy Ritchie announcing the RocknRolla sequel is finally moving forward.