Apparently today is "The Shield Actors Go To The Movies Day." Just a little while ago it was reported that series star Michael Chiklis has been cast as the main villain in the Taylor Hackford-directed Parker, but while we wait to see if Catherine Dent, CCH Pounder or Michael Jace grab new roles, the future will have more Detective Shane Vendrell.
Deadline has it that Walton Goggins, who has also received unyielding praise for his performance as Boyd Crowder on the FX series Justified, has landed a place in the star-studded cast of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. In the film, Goggins will play Wells A. Hutchins, a congressman from Ohio who famously went against his party and voted in favor of abolishing slavery. The ridiculous cast already includes the likes of Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hal Holbrook, James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Bruce McGill, David Strathairn and Joseph Cross. The project is based on the book "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin, who wrote the adaptation with Tony Kushner. The movie is scheduled to begin production this fall and will be released in late 2012.
Goggins is easily one of the best actors around, and while Hutchins is probably a fairly small part, it's always great to see an amazing-but-lesser-known actor land a part in a production as big as this one. My only curiosity is how this will affect the shooting schedule of Justified, which typically filming during that time. We might just have to hope that his part is more than a glorified cameo.
