WebProNews

Tag: LBJ

  • Woody Harrelson To Star In Rob Reiner’s ‘LBJ’

    According to reports from Variety and Entertainment Weekly, Woody Harrelson is set to play President Lyndon B. Johnson on the big screen.

    The 53-year-old True Detective and Hunger Games actor will join Tom Wilkinson, Bryan Cranston and Liev Schreiber in the “Actors who have played LBJ” club.

    Harrelson will also star in three more films this year: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, Triple 9 and Now You See Me: The Second Act.

    President Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, was a man who helped pass the Civil Rights Act. Tom Wilkinson was the most recent actor to play the role of the former president.

    During Wilkinson’s portrayal of Johnson’s character in LBJ, some accused the film of placing the former president in a slightly unfavorable light. But according to director Ava DuVemay, she just presented a fairer, unbiased and more complex version of LBJ, a person facing conflicts between his political obligations and his conscience.

    LBJ 2015’s script was written by Joey Hartstone, and the film will be helmed by Reiner. Reiner was the director of the recent 2014 film And So It Goes.

    “During the ’60s, I was a hippy, and Lyndon Johnson was my president,” said Reiner in an interview with Hollywood Reporter. “At the time LBJ was the target of most of my generation’s anti-Vietnam War anger. But as time has passed and my understanding of political realities has grown, I’ve come to see LBJ in a very different light. He was a complex man, a combination of brilliant political instinct, raw strength, ambition and deep insecurities.”

    The new film will chronicle the Southern politician’s rise to become the 36th president of the United States from being just a Texan Congressman.

    Filming of the movie is expected to begin this September in locations like New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Dallas and Washington.

  • Bryan Cranston Will Portray LBJ In Broadway Play

    After the end of Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston has already taken on a new role. He will play former president Lyndon Johnson in a Broadway play called All The Way. For those of you going through withdrawals without Breaking Bad on Sunday nights, you will be able to catch him on Broadway soon enough, which will debut this winter.

    The premiere date is unknown, but it will mark the Broadway debut for the veteran television actor. Cranston gained a lot of fans and recognition for his role as Walter White and although fans are sad to see it go, they can rejoice in the fact that he has a new role to impress audiences with.

    All The Way is written by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Robert Schenkkan, and it tells the story of LBJ through his first year in office after taking over the presidency, following the death of JFK in 1963. It goes on to tell the story of how he get elected and beat out Barry Goldwater in the following year, according to CBS News. It also discusses his advancements in the field of civil rights and the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

    This role will be quite the contrast for Cranston who just finished a five-year-run of playing one of the biggest drug kingpins in the country. AMC’s Breaking Bad recently finished it’s fifth season and was shown to a record number of people, totaling 10.3 million. Cranston has been appearing in the play at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The production has been performing to a sold out crowd and is set to close out the run on Sunday.

    All The Way, which has a runtime of about 3 hours, The Los Angeles Times mentions that it has received mixed reviews so far. The news of Cranston’s casting was released from producer Jeffrey Richards over social media on Sunday. Cranston has been in theater performances before, starting back in 1987 with The Steven Weed Show, and appearing in a 2006 production of Sam Shepard’s The God of Hell.

    Well, it did. It looks like congratulations are in order for All The Way.

    Bryan Cranston is also getting ready to play Lex Luthor in the next Superman film.

    Image via Youtube