Daniel Craig recruited for George Clooney's The Monuments Men
Skyfall star takes role in factual period drama about US and British taskforce charged with recovering art stolen by the Nazis
James Bond star Daniel Craig has joined the cast of George Clooney's Nazi art drama The Monuments Men, according to the Wrap.
The period film, which Clooney is co-writing and directing, centres on a real-life group of men and women who risked their lives to track down art stolen by Hitler during the second world war and prevent its destruction. Producers were previously reported to be courting Oscar-winners Jean Dujardin and Cate Blanchett for roles; both are now said to have signed on the dotted line, along with Bill Murray, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville and Bob Balaban.
Clooney is also taking a leading role as US army officer and leading art conservationist George Stout, who repatriated tens of thousands of pieces of art from the Nazis. Blanchett portrays Rose Valland, an art historian and member of the French resistance.
At this stage it is not clear which role Craig, star of Sam Mendes's new Bond film, Skyfall, is due to take.
The Monuments Men, which Clooney has written with Grant Heslov, is based on Robert Edsel's book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. It centres on the 11-month period between D-day and VE-day, when a taskforce of American and British art experts were charged with scouring Europe for lost and stolen art. Production is due to start on 1 March 2013 in Germany, Austria, Paris and England.
In other Bond news, Roger Moore has said he believes Steven Spielberg only made the Indiana Jones films after allegedly being turned down for the long-running spy series in the late 70s. Moore, who played 007 seven times between 1973 and 1985, reveals in his forthcoming book My Word Is My Bond that he once met Spielberg in Paris to discuss the possibility of the young director working on a Bond movie.
"He was a huge Bond fan and said that he would love to direct one of the films," writes Moore. "He'd recently had great success with Jaws and Close Encounters [of the Third Kind] and was considered a very hot property. I was rather excited at this news and went looking for [Bond producer Albert R] Broccoli to tell him."
Moore revealed Broccoli, who oversaw the Bond franchise for more than three decades, shook his head and asked: "Do you know how much of a percentage he'd want?" The actor added: "It's always been policy that no Bond director ever got a slice of the box-office profits, so Spielberg went off and made Indiana Jones, who[m] I reckon to be a period James Bond."
Moore, 85, also told the BBC while promoting the book that he would love to play a villain in the series, or return as 007's boss at MI6.
source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/oct ... uments-men