Sir Ian is still insanely busy, with this week’s Flushed Away just the lastest in a whole slew of movie projects that have kicked off since his roaring successes in the X-Men and Lord of the Rings trilogies.
The veteran Shakespearian actor has three more movies currently in the pipeline – as well as a bit more stage work lined up for Spring 2007, taking the lead role in King Lear and that of patriarch Sorin in Checkov’s The Seagull, both for director Sir Trevor Nunn, at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Running from March to June, quite how Sir Ian will find time to make more movies is anyone’s guess.
On the film front, though, McKellen provided a voice-over for low-budget British sci-fi flick Displaced while filming for TV soap Coronation Street last year, and is apparently set to appear in the X-Men spin-off Magneto – a prequel that will explore how the supervillain became the evil metal-attracting mastermind that we know from the films (and comics), and his early friendship with X-Men leader Charles Xavier. The rest of the cast has not yet been announced, although Patrick Stewart is rumoured to be in talks.
McKellen’s biggest film role in the next year or so is therefore going to be as near-legendary (and somewhat controversial, to put it mildly) British imperial hero Cecil Rhodes in an intriguing-sounding adaptation of ann Harries’ complex historical novel The Collossus. Set at the end of the 19th century, it follows the travels of an Oxford professor – to be played by Colin Firth – to Africa during the latter days of Rhodes’ rule, and his gradual realisation of the inevitability of the impending Boer War. Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon will co-star.
To keep up with all his latest news, you could do a lot worse than bookmark Sir Ian’s excellent website.
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