As easy as it is to classify and describe the casting tone of a film like The Expendables -a film filled to the brim with badasses and action muscle- it’s nearly impossible to come up with a single adjective that covers all of the cast for Summit Entertainment’s upcoming spy flick and Bruce Willis vehicle Red.
Variety is reporting a release date of October 22nd, 2010 for the jam-packed picture that they describe as “follow[ing] a former black-ops CIA agent who lives a quiet life in retirement until the day a high-tech assassin shows up intent on killing him. With his secret identity compromised and his love interest in danger, he must reassemble his old team to figure out who is out to get them.”
His old team? Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, John C. Reilly, Helen Mirren, Julian McMahon, Brian Cox, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Dreyfuss. Add one or two more names and you’ve got yourself a slyly robbed casino. The script is being written by Jon and Erich Hoeber (Whiteout, Battleship) and is based off of a 2003 comic book mini-series.
Naturally not all of those folks are likely to be donning cutting-edge black-ops gear and spying around town on Willis’ team (Cox is the antagonist, I do believe), but it’s an impressive cast to boast nonetheless. Keep in mind that not all of these people are 100% confirmed to have signed on the line that is dotted, so Red could potentially dwindle in impressiveness as talent is concretely secured. That being said, it seems like everyone is on board and if the roster remains when the cameras roll, there’ll be more than one stupidly recognizable cast next year.