Joel Edgerton Confirmed For Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Kill Bin Laden’

Aussie Actor Turned Down ‘Snow White And The Huntsman’ For the Film


Four days ago, Osama Bin Laden was killed. Today, it looks like we have a lead actor signed on for the movie about it. Hollywood moves fast.

As was reported just a few days ago, Kathryn Bigelow‘s brewing black-ops project got a morbid boost when the most wanted man in the world was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and buried at sea earlier this week. The film had been rumored earlier in the year to be about the hunt for Bin Laden, although reps for writer Mark Boal told us in January that it wasn’t true. But now, the point is moot, because following the breaking news of Bin Laden’s death, the project with working title “Kill Bin Laden,” was said to be undergoing rewrites by Boal that would include Bin Laden’s death as well as a sequence that would recreate the raid on his compound. Not only that, it was reported that rising “Animal Kingdom” star Joel Edgerton was the frontrunner for the lead role. Now it appears he’s been locked down.

24 Frames is reporting that Edgerton has signed on for the film, and given the timeliness of the real-life story and the proposed summer shoot date, we’re not too surprised they’re casting now. The story goes that Edgerton actually passed on “Snow White And The Huntsman” to do Bigelow’s film (bravo!) and he’ll be one of an ensemble of male actors cast in special ops/commando roles in the film.

We’ll be seeing a lot more of Edgerton in the coming year as he’s got “Warrior” with Tom Hardy and “The Thing” remake on the hitting theaters. He’s also got the indie “The Odd Life Of Timothy Green” under his belt and likely coming in 2012. We have no qualms at all with the casting and we’re sure this is just the first domino of more casting news to come.

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