Wow, talk about a makeover. The long developing adaptation of Elmore Leonard‘s “Freaky Deaky” at one time had folks like William H. Macy and Sienna Miller in the leads before going through a few casting shifts and settling on the lesser, but still somewhat respectable quartet of Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser, Craig Robinson and Katie Cassidy. Well, Variety reveals that the film has undergone yet another casting overhaul and has settled on a cast that pretty much guarantees the film a straight-to-VOD release.
“Twilight” star Billy Burke, Christian Slater, Michael Jai White, newcomer Breanne Racano and Roger Bart will now star in the film. So what’s it all about? The plot centers on an ex-hippie couple (Slater and Racano) with radical politics who reunite to trick Woody Ricks, an alcoholic hard-partying movie mogul out of his money for a score worth millions, while Chris Mankowski, a cop with bomb squad experience (Burke) teams with another cop (Bart) and tries to take them down. White will play former Black Panther Donnell Lewis, who is Woody’s assistant.
There’s no word yet on who will play the role of the Hollywood mogul, but for what it’s worth, it was the part Macy was previously eyeing. There’s no word on why the cast was totally overhauled, but if we had to guess, we’d say that the film got a major slash to funding causing the filmmakers to approach more, uh, affordable stars to round out the movie.
Filming was supposed to begin last month but we presume that has changed a little bit. No word yet on the new start but let’s hope for everyone’s sake this cast will stick. At the very least, director Charles Matthau — slotted since day one — is still in the director’s chair.
