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  • Benedict Cumberbatch and Paul Dano join the cast of ‘Twelve Years A Slave’!

    These young actors are quickly moving up the ranks of the acting world...

    June 1, 2012

    Steve McQueen is one of the most interesting up and coming directors working today. With ‘Hunger’ and ‘Shame’, he’s made two terrific films (though I like the latter a lot better and actually find the former to be very slightly overrated), and his next project ‘Twelve Years A Slave’ could be his most ambitious one yet. It’s certainly got his highest profile cast to date, with Michael Fassbender again working with McQueen, and the likes of Chiwetel Ejiofor and Brad Pitt. Well, hot on the heels of Paul Dano joining the cast last week, Variety is reporting here that in demand actor Benedict Cumberbatch has signed up as well. After the jump you can see what the film is about, but it’s currently shaping up to be a really interesting one. I know I’ll be seeing it, hopefully next year sometime…


    Here’s the official plot synopsis:

    Based on a true story, 12 YEARS A SLAVE is a riveting account of a free black man kidnapped from New York and sold into brutal slavery in mid-1850s Louisiana, and the inspiring story of his desperate struggle to return home to his family.

    SOLOMON NORTHUP (Chiwtel Ejiofor), an educated black man with a gift for music, lives with his wife and children in Saratoga, New York. One day, when his family is out of town, he is approached by two men claiming to be circus promoters. Solomon agrees to travel with them briefly, playing the fiddle while they perform. But after sharing a drink with the men, he awakens to find he has been drugged and bound and faces a horrifying reality: he is being shipped to the South as a slave.

    No one listens to Solomon’s claim that he has papers proving his status as a free man. Despairing, he plots his escape, only to be foiled at every turn. He is sold to WILLIAM FORD, a kindly mill owner who appreciates Solomon’s thoughtful nature. But Ford is forced to sell him to a cruel master who subjects him and other slaves to unspeakable brutality. For years, Solomon nurtures his dreams of returning home. He stashes slips of stolen paper in his fiddle and develops a natural ink with which to write a letter. But when his greatest efforts come to nothing, he realizes just how trapped he is. Even if he could write the letter without being caught, where would he send it? Whom could he trust to deliver it? And will he even survive long enough to be rescued?

    Refusing to abandon hope, Solomon watches helplessly as those around him succumb to violence, crushing emotional abuse and hopelessness. He realizes that he will have to take incredible risks, and depend on the most unlikely people, if he is ever to regain his freedom and be reunited with his family.

    -Thoughts? Discuss on the Forum!

    About Joey Magidson


    When he’s not obsessing over new Oscar predictions on a weekly basis, Joey is seeing between 200 and 300 movies a year. He views the best in order to properly analyze the awards race/season each year, but he also watches the worst for reasons he mostly sums up as "so you all don't have to". In his spare time, you can usually find him complaining about the Jets or the Mets. Still, he lives and dies by film. Joey's a voting member of the Internet Film Critics Association as well. Today the IFCA, tomorrow the world!

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    11 Comments

    1. I don’t think McQueen is that interesting, but good to know.

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    2. Sounds great.

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    3. Quite a cast! Cumberbatch is an interesting choice here, not sure what such a distinctly British actor is doing in such an explicitly American story.

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      • Not that I think he’s a bad choice or will screw up his role (unless his character is British anyway), I just think it’s curious.

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    4. Could be a contender for 2013. Definitely interested in what McQueen does, and even moreso in anything Fassbender does.

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    5. A nice cast so far.

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