http://chud.com/nextraimages/seattle2.jpgLast week I told you about The Battle in Seattle, a movie that sounds like it would be about boxing but is in fact about the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Starbucks City. Charlize Theron was the first name attached to the film, which makes some sense, as her boyfriend Stuart Townsend is writing and directing. Now two more names have been attached to the film, and we’ve learned a little more that will help us understand what this picture will look like.


Susan Sarandon and Chris Evans are the new names attached. Sarandon will play a newscaster who is sympathetic with the protestors, while Evans will play a flaming superhero who tries to keep the riots under control. Actually I have no idea what he’ll be doing in the movie. Probably wearing a black bandana around his face and tossing something through a Gap window. It turns out that Theron will play Lou, a pregnant woman who loses her baby in the course of the turmoil (spoilers, I guess?), and who has a “neutral” view on the whole shebang.


The film will be shot pseudo-documentary style, and Townsend has hired the right guy to do it – Barry Ackroyd, Paul Greengrass’ cinematographer on United 93. The story will follow a dozen people who get swept up in the protests, which had at least 60,000 people showing their resistance to globalization. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Townsend is going to populate his film with people who will have different views on what’s going on, surely an attempt to create some sort of “objective” view of the protests. Ho hum.

The Battle in Seattle will film in Seattle and Vancouver starting next month. No word yet on how Townsend is going to handle those crowd scenes.