Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Josh Holloway joins the cast of 'Mission: Impossible IV'


(This news feature was written by me for the site www.thefilmpilgrim.com, on which it can also be found)

'Lost' fans rejoice - we have more Holloway heading our way. The 'Lost' star is in final negotiations to appear in the as yet untitled fourth Mission: Impossible installment, in his first major role since the hit show wrapped up this year.

J.J. Abrams (who was the executive producer on 'Lost'), having directed Mission: Impossible 3, is only co-writing and producing this time around, with directing duties being handed over to Brad Bird, whose previous directing credits (curiously) are limited to children’s films such as The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

Abrams, as expected, is making sure that the crew and ever growing cast remain tight-lipped on any details about the film.

Starring alongside Holloway and Tom Cruise will be Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker, The Town), as well as franchise veterans Maggie Q, Jonathan Ryhs Meyers, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames.

This will be Holloway’s biggest film role to date. His career started with an appearance in the Joss Whedon show Angel as a ‘Good looking guy’. After that he acted in a series of low key films (even once working with future Lost-colleague Jeff Fahey), appeared in several single episodes of TV shows such as CSI and NCIS, and lent his voice to the video game Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars, before finally landing his role as James ‘Sawyer’ Ford on 'Lost'. During the show's six year run he was only able to appear in a couple of little-known indie films – Whisper and Stay Cool – him having to pass on larger opportunities since they tended to overlap with the filming of the show.

Other 'Lost' cast members, however, were far more fortunate with their scheduling commitments; many of them managed to grab roles in major films: most notably, Naveen Andrews appeared in Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror; Evangeline Lilly nabbed a small role in The Hurt Locker; Matthew Fox appeared in Vantage Point and Street Racer; Emilie De Ravin appeared in popular noir feature Brick, horror remake The Hills Have Eyes, as well as Public Enemies and Remember Me; Henry Ian Cusick appeared in Hitman; Nestor Carbonell had a small role in The Dark Knight; and even Maggie Grace returned to the public’s attention with the The Fog remake.

The casting of Holloway is a smart move by Abrams. To reveal a small insight into the psyche of one die hard 'Lost' fan’s mind: I would go and see any film that had Holloway, Evangeline Lilly or Henry Ian Cusick in it, just for that simple fact, and the same goes for several other members of the show’s cast. Add to this the huge female draw that Holloway’s undeniable sex-appeal will bring and that’s a considerably large number of people you have managed to add to your potential audience.



Previous Mission: Impossible films have managed to further raise the profiles of such actresses as Thandie Newton and Michelle Monaghan, so hopefully, if Holloway is given a role that both makes use of the Sawyer-esque charm that we all love and also shows him capable of acting outside of that persona, this film could do the same for his career.

Other members of the 'Lost' cast are also throwing themselves headlong into films now that Lost is over; both Evangeline Lilly and Kevin Durand will appear in Real Steel, a boxing drama about robots doing battle; Jeff Fahey and Michelle Rodriguez will appear in Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, as well as Michelle Rodriguez appearing in the upcoming alien invasion film Battle: Los Angeles; Daniel Dae Kim will appear in The Killing Game and the Philip K. Dick short story adaptation The Adjustment Bureau; Dominic Monaghan will appear in Soldiers of Fortune; and others, such as Harold Perrineau and Nestor Carbonell, are involved in various other projects.

The film production crew of 'Mission: Impossible IV' are scouting locations in Vancouver, Prague and Dubai for a fall shoot, aiming for a December 2011 release.

No comments:

Post a Comment