Gwyneth Paltrow and Ewan McGregor to join Mortdecai

OHMYGOSSIP — Gwyneth Paltrow and Ewan McGregor are in talks to join the cast of ‘Mortdecai’. The ‘Iron Man’ actress and the ‘Trainspotting’ star are expected to head up an all-star cast alongside Johnny Depp in David Koepps’ crime drama.

The film is based on a trilogy of books by Kyril Bonfiglioli which centre around roguish art dealer Charles Mortdecai (Johnny Depp). The suave antihero embarks on a race against the clock to recover a stolen painting thought to contain the code to a lost Nazi bank account filled with gold.

However, he’ll have to deal with angry Russians, the British Mi5 and an international terrorist along the way.

Eric Aronson wrote the script, while Andrew Lazar, Depp and Christi Dembrowski are producing for Lionsgate.

After Depp recently pulled out of a biopic about Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, filming has been pushed forward.

Koepp in pencilling a shoot once the 50-year-old star has wrapped Wally Pfister’s ‘Transcendence’ and Rob Marshall’s fairytale movie ‘Into The Woods’, Variety reports.

Paltrow will next be seen in indie flick ‘Thanks For Sharing’, while McGregor’s ‘August: Osage County’ is out this autumn.

_________________________________
Kyril Bonfiglioli (29 May 1928 – 3 March 1985) was variously an art dealer, editor, and writer. He was born Cyril Emmanuel George Bonfiglioli in Eastbourne, to an Italo-Slovene father, Emmanuel Bonfiglioli, and English mother, Dorothy née Pallett. Having served in the army from 1947 to 1954, and been widowed, he applied to Balliol College, Oxford where he took his degree. After his divorce from his second wife he lived in Lancashire, Jersey and Ireland. He died in Jersey of cirrhosis of the liver in 1985. He had five children.

He edited Science Fantasy magazine for a period from 1964 to 1966, appointed by David Warburton of Roberts and Vinter Ltd.; and the successor Impulse for its first few issues in 1966 before handing the reins to Harry Harrison.

He wrote nearly four books featuring Charlie Mortdecai, three of which were published in his lifetime, and one posthumously as completed by the satirist Craig Brown. Charlie Mortdecai is the fictional art dealer anti-hero of the series. His character resembles, among other things, an amoral Bertie Wooster with occasional psychopathic tendencies. His books are still in print and have been translated into several different languages including Spanish, French, Italian, German and Japanese.

Bonfiglioli’s style and novel structure have often been favourably compared to that of P. G. Wodehouse. Mortdecai and his manservant Jock Strapp bear a fun-house mirror relation to Wodehouse’s Wooster and Jeeves. The author makes a nod to this comparison by having Mortdecai reference Wodehouse in the novels.

His second wife, Margaret Bonfiglioli wrote and compiled a posthumous anthology of works and anecdotes, called “The Mortdecai ABC.”

The three original books:
    Don’t Point That Thing At Me (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972)
    Something Nasty In The Woodshed (Macmillan, 1976)
    After You With The Pistol (Secker and Warburg, 1979)

---

---