Casting for Quentin Tarantino‘s slave-turned-bounty hunter feature Django Unchained seems to be never ending, but at least today offers a name worth reporting on as Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Bruno) is in final negotiations to join the cast.
The film centers on Django (Jamie Foxx), a freed slave who seeks to reunite with Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), his slave wife, a journey which will see him team up with Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German bounty hunter, to take down Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), an evil plantation owner.
Cohen’s role is described by Variety as one of the last big parts left to be cast. The role is that of Scotty, a gambler who buys Django’s wife as a female companion. As you can tell from the plot description above, this will be a rather important part, presumably more so during the film’s finale.
This will mark another step in a direction away from Cohen’s most well-known personas such as Borat and Bruno and continue along the lines he started in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd as well as an upcoming role in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.
Along with Cohen, other recent names joining the cast include “Dexter’s” James Remar, Rex Linn (whom I will always remember as the loudmouth from Stallone’s Cliffhanger), James Russo who played Walter Dietrich in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies and will be seen in the Oscar contending foreign film Miss Bala and Tom Wopat who played Colonel Slocum in Jonah Hex.
All of these names join a list of previously cast actors including Samuel L. Jackson, Gerald McRaney, Dennis Christopher, Kurt Russell, M.C. Gainey, Don Johnson, Tom Savini, Anthony LaPaglia and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Filming is expected in New Orleans in January for a Christmas Day 2012 release.
