Sooner or later, Quentin Tarantino is going to have to stop casting his spaghetti Western Django Unchained and start filming the damn thing. Kerry Washington recently joined, while Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the latest name rumored to join the ensemble. On the heels of that tidbit comes news that Anthony LaPaglia has tossed his name into the Unchained gang.
Deadline reports that the Without a Trace star will play the head of an Australian gang who run into Jamie Foxx’s title character, a former slave and current bounty hunter who is trying to rescue his wife (Washington) from the clutches of a vile plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio) who trains slaves to fight each other in bloody conflicts.
LaPaglia says Tarantino’s screenplay is “wildly ambitious and imaginative,” and adds that it “deals with that subject matter in a way it hasn’t been dealt with before.” We’ll have to take his word for it, as the bulk of the news surrounding the project has dealt with the director’s desire to cram every actor under the sun into a role. In addition to the names mentioned, Tarantino’s Django Unchained reportedly also co-stars Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Rusell, Michael K. Williams, Tom Savini and Don Johnson.
I’ve said on record that unless Django Unchained is three hours long (and it possibly could be), Tarantino’s challenge will be finding time for every recognizable face. Now, he has shown in the past that he has the ability to juggle massive ensembles in virtually all of his films. But Kill Bill needed two features to tell its story, and other Tarantino films test the regular run-time standards. We’ll see how Django fares when it opens next Christmas.
