One of Horton Foote’s last works is adding cast and moving closer to production.
Producers on “Main Street,” the late playwright’s new and final screenplay, are in negotiations to cast Orlando Bloom and have signed Andrew McCarthy ahead of the project’s planned April shoot.
The pair join an ensemble that already includes Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Clarkson and Colin Firth. It has yet to cast the central character, a young-girl role.
Foote’s drama centers on a group of people in a small town in North Carolina whose lives are shaken up when a stranger arrives. Bloom will play a small-town policeman, while McCarthy will play a Lothario business manager.
The project, which Reliant Pictures is producing, is set to start shooting in Durham. N.C., next month. Tony Award winner John Doyle is helming the picture.
Next for Bloom, who was a key part of tentpole franchises “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Lord of the Rings,” is Mark Ruffalo’s directorial debut “Sympathy for Delicious.” McCarthy stars in Wall Street drama “The Good Guy,” which will premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Foote, who died this month, was best known as a playwright but also wrote screenplays, with such movies as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Tender Mercies” among his credits.
