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After auditioning more than 15,000 teenage girls, Paramount and True Grit directors Joel and Ethan Coen have found their Mattie Ross in Hailee Steinfeld. The 13-year old will play the centerpiece of a new adaptation of the Charles Portis novel, with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin starring. Mattie Ross is the 14-year old spitfire whose father has been mowed down in cold blood by Tom Chaney (Brolin). Determined to bring the killer to justice, Mattie enlists hard-drinking U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) to track the killer before a Texas Ranger (Damon) does. The Coens are producing with Scott Rudin. While most of the teens who auditioned were unknowns, Steinfeld has some credits. She has even more reps, just signing with ICM, who’ll rep her along with Coast to Coast Talent Group and Protégé.
In another youthful casting, Millennium Films and Paradox Entertainment hired Leo Howard to play the young title character in Conan, the Marcus Nispel-directed reinvention of the Robert E. Howard series. Jason Momoa, the brawny Stargate Atlantis star, plays Conan full grown. Sean Hood has just been hired to do a rewrite before the picture begins production March 15 in Bulgaria. Howard, a 12-year old karate champ, stars in Disney Channel’s Leo Little’s Big Show and was also in last summer’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. He played young Snake Eyes (Ray Park played him as an adult).
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Hope Conan fares better than Red Sonja. Millennium still has a Sonja poster on the side of their office with a 2008 release date on it. Knowing Avi and co., checks probably didn’t clear.
15,000?! That’s unreal. Most of those HAD to have been just headshots. I would be boggled if Paramount actually auditioned that many.
Yes, it was. I auditioned. They took us in groups of 12, asked us questions, and then picked 6 out of the group that could work. Then the ones that were picked got to actually audition. But it was still a large number of tapes they watched.
They had open auditions and if you could not go to one of those, they asked you to send in a headshot. If they liked what they saw, they contacted you to send in an audition tape reading their script. That is how one of my girls got to audition. They liked her picture and asked for a tape.
they did open casting calls where girls could video auditions of themselves at home and then send them in to the casting office. but yes, auditions usually start out as just headshots – you have one second to impress the casting director.
Wasn’t Shia available for both roles? All roles? Thanks to Eddie Murphy and James Cameron now Shia can play every role in every movie!
odd to see the Coens doing a remake, especially of a well-known film. thought the duo were beyond that sort of thing. maybe it’s what they have to do following the commercial shortfall of A Serious Man.
It’s based on the book. You know, a novel. They aren’t remaking the John Wayne starer, which was very loosely based on the book. It’s a perfect fit for them. A under-appreciated novel.I read it when I first heard they were going to do it and was interested to see what the attraction was.
Their script for this is hands-down awesome. You’ll forget the original even existed.
Apparently the Coen’s were attracted to the TRUE GRIT remake after reading the novel and being impressed by it. Sadly, I doubt the key people behind the CONAN remake will try to stay faithful to the original stories…
Sounds like they are NOT remaking the old film but making a new film from the book, and hopefully closer to it. Hasn’t this been in the works for a while? Was A Serious Man ever expected to be a blockbuster? Do you really think the Coens choose their projects that way? Perfect casting,BTW. Can’t wait.
i heard icm signed her…is that true?
Yes she signed with ICM and Chris Hart. Big signing for them…
Why remake Hathaway’s triumph? Why invite comparisons with an iconic role like Wayne’s? You can’t make a new western? Why piss all over a classic?
True Grit might be a well-known film, but their film is supposed to be more faithful to the original novel. I really believe they have something to add to the story, I don’t think they’re remake a film just for a buck, even if A Serious Man didn’t make any.
yeah, loved their original film called The Ladykillers. Also, I’m just glad that Taylor “Unproven Talent” Lautner isn’t in the cast…
It’s a shame the Coen Brothers feel compelled to remake what is already a classic film. I also feel bad for Jeff Bridges, stepping into John Wayne’s considerable boots. I think Jeff Bridges is a terrific actor but he’s doing himself a disservice by taking this role.
I had heard of ’18 to play younger’ casting but 13 (or 12) to play older?
That’s different. Not something that sounds like a good idea to me but of late Hollywood & a good idea are rarely associated with one another.
Too bad both of these projects are re-[whatever they're calling it these days]. There have been so many bad re-whatevers before them that they’re already handicapped.
Why are they even redoing this classic? There’s no need. It was great the first time.
I auditioned for that part! And yes, they really did go through 15,000 girls for this. Does anyone know where Hailie Stanfield is from?!
The whole idea of taking a great piece of work from John Wayne and trying to upstage it just makes me SICK SICK SICK SICK SICK.
I went to one of the open auditions just to see what it was like because I am very interested in modeling and acting. There was an interview before they let you do anything else. The interview only consisted of questions about your interests and such. I was in a group of 12 girls, some girls prettier and more outgoing and confident than others, and every single girl who was chosen to go on and read lines (or whatever they were going to do for the next round) was quiet, not outgoing, and was simple/plain looking. I can understand this because the girl in the original movie is a spit-fire and tomboy-ish. I was not chosen to go on to the next round. I am interested to see what the girl they chose looks like and how well she really can act…
How did you know about this audition? Thanks.
Actually, the first version was as true to the book as any motion picture I’ve ever seen. Making books come alive visually is very difficult. About the only real variation from the book that I remember after all of these years is that in the book Mattie actually lost her arm and in the movie, she didn’t. Glen Campbell got a bum rap from the critics. It was his first role and he was next to the Duke which was a heck of a position to be in. Had someone worked with him technically before hand, he would have done a better job. The same thing happened to Yul Brenner in the MAGNIFICIENT 7. Steve McQueen knew how to act on film and how to play to the camera and Brenner, a tremendous talent but one who had only done theater, came out looking like a dufus. I’ll go see this oe, but I’m more interested in seeing how Marshals, I.T, an independent film with an original western script comes out.