Joel Edgerton: Tom Buchanan In 'The Great Gatsby' Remake

In a new film version of what is arguably the Great American Novel, a rising Australian has just replaced an American superstar. Then again, it is being shot on his home turf.

Deadline reports that "Animal Kingdom" star Joel Edgerton has beat out Luke Evans for the role of Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann's epic, potentially 3D retelling of "The Great Gatsby," winning the right to replace Ben Affleck, who had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts.

"In casting Tom one had to find an actor who could credibly be (as Fitzgerald describes him) 'one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven,' had five-star acting chops and in the big dramatic showdown scenes between Gatsby and Tom, hold the screen against Leonardo DiCaprio, in the appropriate age group," Luhrmann told Deadline.

Edgerton joins a star-studded cast: DiCaprio plays the enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby; Tobey Maguire the narrator and protagonist Nick Carraway; Carey Mulligan, Edgerton's on-screen wife Daisy Buchanan; (potentially) Isla Fisher as his mistress, Myrtle; and newcomer and fellow Aussie Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker.

A longtime star in Australia, "Animal Kingdom" has launched Edgerton's career into overdrive; he's releasing four films in 2011, including the upcoming "Warrior" with Tom Hardy. He's wrapping up on "The Odd Life of Timothy Green," with Jennifer Garner and Common; "Say Nothing" with Teresa Palmer; and "The Thing" with Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

For more, click over to Deadline.

Comments

[Wonder Woman2]

10:38 PM on 05/18/2011

with Ben it might have had a chance.

[marred]

09:04 PM on 05/18/2011

Animal Kingdom was awful. This film will be awful. Anyone see 'Australia'?

[DJCranky]

11:07 PM on 05/18/2011

What? Animal Kingdom was awesome!!! Happy for Joel but I want more Jackie Weaver, too!

[jjgg5]

01:59 AM on 05/19/2011

Jackie Weaver should have won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar this year for her great performance in "Animal Kingdom". I hope Hollywood takes note of her.

[PaddyMc68]

08:47 PM on 05/18/2011

This already has disaster written all over it.

[dre31]

05:23 PM on 05/18/2011

Hes very attractive

[SF TKF]

02:55 PM on 05/18/2011

DiCaprio as Gatsby is simply terrible casting. And the idea of such a story being made in 3D is laughable. Why?

[mogendaved]

04:52 PM on 05/18/2011

$$$$ the studios are laughing at all of us

[jjgg5]

02:11 AM on 05/19/2011

At the time, many critics noted that the god awful 70's production should have had Robert Redford and Bruce Dern's switching their roles. This might be a repeat of that.

[Paul Baack]

02:45 PM on 05/18/2011

Tobey Maguire as Nick Caraway? He's a fine actor, but the fit doesn't seem right. Same thing for DiCaprio as Gatsby, but then again, on paper at least, Robert Redford seemed to be perfect casting... and look how that turned out.

But why the heck does "The Great Gatsby" need to be in 3-D??? What service to Fitzgerald's novel will that serve? Unless there are previously-undiscovered action sequences in the book, I don't get it. Is it going to be in IMAX also?

[gala1]

04:23 PM on 05/18/2011

I wonder if the problem might be that there are very few novels as inherently iconically American,--not just the snobbery but the geographic implications too- especially for New Yorkers, as Gatsby. .
As much so as Faulkner is about the South.

And Luhrmann is Australian and may get across how innately insular WASP culture is to portray. It's far more psychological than it is visual. Think Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in the Philadelphia Story. It is far easier to do as comedy. And the only thing ever to be comic about Gatsby was casting Mia Farrow as Daisy. I have never looked at Minnie Mouse in quite the same way since. .
The Gold Coast was the Old Guard's last stand. Fitzgerald's readers knew that then. And remember, contemporary 20's readers were who it was written for. There is no way you can imagine Gatsby in cargo shorts hunched in front of a lap-top in Palo Alto.
Gatsby was a grown-up with adult goals and aspirations.. And so were Fitzgerald's readers.

The cult of infantilization didn't start to exist til a half century later.
For the dotcommon billionaire, Daisy now would be just the latest Apple innovation that he didn't get first. Why bother spilling blood now? He'd just fire his publicists and build a bigger house. It's not about passion and pistols, it's now about competitive square footage.

3D Gatsby is pretty exactly the equivalent of Jane Austen zombies. A dumb idea.

[Thomas J Williams]

05:15 PM on 05/18/2011

I've been trying to figure out the entire 3-D thing since I first heard of Baz considering it. The only thing I can think of is the car accident and its victim flying into the audience (for real ... what else would require 3-D?!?). I won't mention names as to keep from any kind of spoilers; but I'd assume anybody reading this knows the story anyway.

[RonNYC]

02:41 PM on 05/18/2011

Sounds dreadful. I see no point in retelling the story. It's a great one but after that hack job with Redford and Farrow, why even bother. It is not a modern story.

[Eric Sean]

01:46 PM on 05/18/2011

The Great Gatsby in 3-D? WTF?

[gala1]

01:41 PM on 05/18/2011

I've often wondered if there isn't a curse on trying to film Gatsby. Every single attempt has been so woefully miscast, mis-written and so mistakenly directed. It's always a movie where you end up watching the furniture.
Fitzgerald wrote what he knew -- the fullest shining of the Long Island Gold Coast. He was obsessed as only an outsider could be about how wealth back then was bottom-line an impregnable class-system. As closed and as full of subtle gradations as any royal court.

It doesn't film well. Especially when the actors, and worse, tabloid-trained audiences, don't have the slightest cultural notion of, for example how an ironically raised eyebrow or a drawled belittlement can devastate every aim.

Fitzgerald took Wharton and James and dressed them in flapper clothes.
Gatsby is a period piece that never seems to get it when it's filmed. I can't even see DiCaprio as the pool boy. I've never been able to figure out why Gatsby is always cast as a pretty man with actors that have no inherent edginess. You need someone like Jon Hamm. He's just what I mean.
For this to work you need an actor that can make sparks fly. And Daisy has to be Grace Kelly blinding. Don and Betty Draper, folks. And, even harder, Tom Buchanan, has to be truly loathsomely patrician. An unlobotomized young George Bush. It all hinges on the casting. And so far, it's always been great ghastly wrong.

[gala1]

02:07 PM on 05/18/2011

I'd be remiss if I didn't add that there was one production of Gatsby notable for really decent acting. Martin Donovan made a very good Tom. But he would have been a far better Gatsby and Toby Stephens should have switched with him. He might have made a very interesting Tom.
Mira Sorvino has been the best Daisy so far, but still not even close. She was too warm, too open, and way too human to portray the unattainable. Daisy was not a nice person, ever.

[Paul Baack]

02:50 PM on 05/18/2011

Tom Buchanan = "An unlobotomized young George Bush."

Absolutely, perfectly, spot-on. Brilliant!

F&F'd

[Jazmo]

12:59 PM on 05/18/2011

Did they remake The Thing again (see last paragraph of story, I'm not calling this actor The Thing)?

The casting for this movie has pretty much left me cold. I'm a big fan of the book, was a big fan of the Redford/Farrow version (I was a young adolescent and it struck every romantic bone in my body). I still don't get how 3D would enhance the movie though.

[josh bates]

02:24 AM on 05/19/2011

Yes, they did remake The Thing. Again. It will be coming out I think sometime this year towards Christmas time.

I wont be seeing it. I am very happy with the original 1951 "The Thing From Another World." and John's movie "The Thing." in 1982. For John's movie was closer and almost the same as the short novella "Who Go's There?" The movies were based on.

In my opinion you will never get a movie that is better than the 82 movie. And I doubt that the ones responsible for this remake have even picked up "Who Go's There?".

[Jazmo]

09:00 AM on 05/19/2011

I was perfectly happy with the 1982 version. I'll have to IMDB, but I'm willing to bet they will cr ap it all up.