Variety reports that Eddie Redmayne, the Oscar-winning actor from The Theory of Everything and the hit Harry Potter prequel franchise Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, has entered negotiations to star in the long-developed political drama The Trial of the Chicago 7.
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The true story follows protesters who disrupted the 1968 Democrat party convention with an anti-Vietnam war “carnival” that turned nasty. Demonstrators threw bricks, police responded with tear gas and the center of Chicago was engulfed in flames. Curfews only escalated the violence.
After the clashes, independent investigators blamed eight police officers and eight protesters including Hoffman, who had already disrupted the New York Stock Exchange with showers of fake money.
The police were not charged but the protesters were accused of inciting a riot. One was jailed for contempt, leaving the seven to fight the charges.
Steven Spielberg was, for years, planning to direct The Trial of the Chicago 7 himself, but the plan became to move forward without Spielberg behind the camera when production was originally scheduled to start in January 2014. Paul Greengrass (22 July) and Ben Stiller (Escape at Dannemora) were both in talks to replace Spielberg at one point, but nothing ever came to fruition with either party.
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Sorkin, who wrote the script in 2007, is just coming off of his directorial debut in last year’s Molly’s Game, which earned rave reviews from critics and audiences and was nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Adapted Screenplay. Cohen, who was originally attached in 2007 for the film, is just coming off of his Showtime political satire Who Is America? and is filming the espionage thriller The Spy for Netflix right now.
Redmayne, who won his Oscar for his role as Stephen Hawking in the 2014 biopic The Theory of Everything, will next be seen in the first of four planned sequels in the fantasy franchise, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindewald and is currently filming the upcoming Amazon Studios drama The Aeronauts alongside his Theory co-star Felicity Jones.
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