Beowulf Castings

Originally Published: June 23, 2005

Columbia Pictures is negotiating with Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Brendan Gleeson and Robin Wright Penn to star in director Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf, based on the classic Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Variety reported. The performance-capture film, about a knight who slays a monster and becomes king, is being financed by Steve Bing’s Shangri-La Entertainment, the trade also reported.

Winstone and his co-stars would be committing to a process that is more like a regular movie than the voice-over work commonly done for 3-D animated films, the trade paper reported. Zemeckis pioneered the technique in The Polar Express and the recently completed summer 2006 release Monster House. The actors perform their roles, which get processed through a computerized motion capture animation process.

Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman adapted Beowulf, and Zemeckis’ Image Movers partners Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke will produce.

A scene from the Polar Express