We haven’t been given many reasons to pay attention to Barry Levinson lately. His last film, 2021’s The Survivor, was quite good but mainly for Ben Foster’s lead performance as Harry Haft. But Levinson’s upcoming JFK film Assassination is looking like a must-see, with a script co-written by David Mamet, Al Pacino set to star, and now the additions of two Academy Award winners and one nominee.
Deadline reports Jessica Chastain, Bryan Cranston, and Brendan Fraser have joined Pacino in Levinson’s JFK conspiracy film, Assassination. The script by Mamet, Levinson, and Sam Bromell is part mystery thriller, part political conspiracy thriller as Chastain plays Dorothy Kilgallen, a prominent media figure at the time who used her celebrity to voice skepticism of the government’s report that Jack Ruby assassinated President Kennedy. She would go on a quest to find the real killer, putting her at odds with the CIA, the FBI, and the mafia, who would all like for her to disappear. And disappear she did when she was found dead by “accidental overdose” in 1965.
When first announced last year, the film was said to center on the Chicago mob plotting JFK’s murder. It appears that plot has been reoriented to focus on Kilgallen. Pacino was signed to play a senior mob boss, likely Sam Giancana, and that’s probably not changed.
Mamet was originally planning to direct the film with Pacino, Shia LaBeouf, John Travolta, and Viggo Mortensen starring.
