Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood, Little Miss Sunshine) is in the final stages of negotiations for a role in Rian Johnson’s latest genre exploration Looper.
Dano would round out an already impressive cast which includes: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. Gordon-Levitt also starred in Johnson’s first film Brick, a noir homage in the vein of a Dashiell Hammett novel.
In a conversation with Moviefone earlier this year, Johnson described Looper:
“Looper is a time travel movie, set in a near future where time travel doesn’t exist but will be invented in a few decades. It’s pretty dark in tone, much different from Bloom, and involves a group of killers (called Loopers) who work for a crime syndicate in the future. Their bosses send their targets hogtied and blindfolded back in time to the Loopers, and their job is to simply shoot them in the head and dispose of the body. So the target vanishes from the future and the Loopers dispose of a corpse that doesn’t technically exist, a very clean system. Complications set in from there. I’m a big sci-fi fan and it’s going to be a fun world to play in.”
Dano would portray one of the Loopers alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt; though his role would be a smaller, but still significant. Paul Dano is evolving into one of the premier character actors of his generation, delivering multifaceted, and often disturbing, performances. We should look forward to seeing what he can contribute to one of Johnson’s created “worlds.”
For Rian Johnson is no stranger to playing in the world of genre; it is becoming his trademark to delve into an existing genre and re-work the tropes so that a unique universe, that exists only within the confines of the film, is created.
Brick, was a neo-noir teen drama, with a created language and social order, that reflected, but did not mirror our world; and an anti-hero/champion (Gordon-Levitt) who served justice to the deadly femme fatal, with the delivery of a mysterious whisper.
The Brother’s Bloom, which was (inexplicably) slightly less well received, was a fast-paced, hilarious, play on the con-film, with some of the most unique, colorful, and appealing characters created this past decade.
As a sci-fi fan, and great admirer of Johnson’s work, I look forward to losing myself in another of his creations when Looper is released in 2012.
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