While all the buzz this week about Matt Damon focused on Deadline’s reveal that he’ll reteam with Paul Greengrass in their third Bourne Identity film, there’s another very exotic international film that Damon is also flirting with. That is the lead role in The Great Wall, the Legendary Pictures film that the great Chinese helmer Zhang Yimou signed on to direct. This is the China-set epic that Legendary Pictures principal Thomas Tull has been trying to mount for the past several years. Scripted by Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro, the film was going to shoot last year and give Legendary a foothold into the China market, at the time with Ed Zwick helming. While Zwick went as far as casting Henry Cavill and Benjamin Walker, it just didn’t get over the wall that time.
“Game of Thrones” breakout star Pedro Pascal is in negotiations to join Matt Damon in Legendary’s untitled Great Wall historical epic, multiple individuals with knowledge of the project have told TheWrap.
“Game of Thrones” breakout star Pedro Pascal is in negotiations to join Matt Damon in Legendary’s untitled Great Wall historical epic, multiple individuals with knowledge of the project have told TheWrap.
Willem Dafoe Joins Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal in Zhang Yimou’s ‘Great Wall’
Willem Dafoe has signed to join Matt Damon in The Great Wall, Legendary’s fantastical retelling of the origin of China’s wondrous barrier.
Zhang Yimou is directing the feature that is a pet project of Legendary CEO Thomas Tull, who conceived it with World War Z writer Max Brooks. It is eyeing an April start in China.
Damon, who is in final negotiations, will star as a soldier who is part of a group of mercenaries traveling to China in order to bring back gunpowder to Europe. When the group is attacked by mystical beasts, the man finds himself in a war between a secret warrior clan and the beasts.
Dafoe's character role is being kept under wraps.
Dafoe is coming off a banner year, that started with by being part of the ensemble of Wes Anderson's Oscar-nominated film The Grand Budapest Hotel. Appearing in the hit weepie The Fault In Our Stars and A Most Wanted Man followed, then he capped it off with a turn in John Wick, the fan-favorite Keanu Reeves action movie.
He is repped by CAA and Circle of Confusion.
A previous version of this story said Dafoe was playing a soldier who survives with Damon.
