A few casting additions to Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, which is gearing up to start filming this January. Variety reports that musician-actor-director RZA will play Thaddeus, a violent slave working on a Mississippi plantation, in the film, along with Misty Upham (Frozen River, Mascots, "Big Love") playing a bar owner named Minnie. Additionally, Deadline reports that Anthony LaPaglia("Without a Trace") has also joined the film, playing the leader of a group of greedy Australians who encounter Django, which as we know is Jamie Foxx, a freed slave who meets up with a German bounty hunter to free his wife.
The cast of Tarantino's highly anticipated Django Unchained features just about everyone, from Jamie Foxx to Leonardo DiCaprio, as well as Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Tom Savini, Don Johnson, and now RZA and Misty Upham, too. Plus there's Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who will be seen with Anthony LaPaglia, as he plays "mean brothers" with Gordon-Levitt. "It's wildly ambitious and imaginative, deals with that subject matter in a way it hasn’t been dealt with before," LaPaglia told Deadline. "The way the cast has shaped up, it's exciting to be involved." I would certainly agree, this is a hell of a project, and it has a hell of cast. The Weinstein Company is producing and will shoot in New Orleans.
As for RZA, he worked on Tarantino's Kill Bill soundtracks, and has acted in films like The Box, American Gangster, Funny People, The Killers, Repo Men, The Next Three Days and A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (out this weekend), but it's good to see him in a solid role in this. He also just finished directing his own kung fu film The Man with the Iron Fists and is currently filming John Chu's G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation playing the Blind Master. As I said before, the cast on this is just fantastic, and I'm glad to see even more interesting names joining the outstanding group that Quentin's wrangled up for his 2012 spaghetti western.
by Alex Billington
