At some point, I’d love to be able to report on a story involving Viggo Mortensen joining a screwball comedy in which he plays the funniest man on Earth, but his career has just featured a string of characters that are either caught up in the aftermath of some devastating event, or they’re actually going through said devastating event. To be expected, the Oscar-nominated actor won’t be changing things up with Captain Fantastic, the Electric City Entertainment drama in which Mortensen is in talks to take the lead. If only this were a superhero film, or a big screen version of the interstitial character from Do Not Adjust Your Set. Oh well.
The film’s description, via Deadline, doesn’t go into much detail, but it paints a somewhat solemn picture of adaptation in the modern world. Mortensen will play a man whose idealism led him to live in complete isolation with his six children in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. After a decade of this amenity-free lifestyle, he and his family have to return to the modern world, which will of course be quite a jarring adjustment. It’s an interesting concept, and one that will no doubt include a scene where someone in the family is blown away by smartphone technology.
This will be the second film from director Matt Ross, who also penned the screenplay, and it’s quite a step away from his first film, the one night stand romantic drama 28 Hotel Room. Check out the trailer for that film below to get a sense of Ross’ talent behind the camera.
Ross has been acting for years, and you may remember him as one of Patrick Bateman’s smarmy friends in American Psycho. He holds quite a bit of respect for Mortensen and says that getting to collaborate with him is "quite literally the best thing that’s happened to me since my wife asked me to marry her." You gotta love that kind of jubilance.
Mortensen isn’t what you’d call a prolific actor, rarely taking on more than one film a year, with his last films, Ana Piterbarg’s crime drama Everybody Has a Plan and Walter Salles’ adaptation On the Road, both coming in 2012. 2014 could be his busiest year in ages, though, as he’ll star in Hossein Amini’s crime drama The Two Faces of January, David Oelhoffen’s French war drama Far From Men and the untitled next drama from filmmaker Lisandro Alonso.
Filming on Captain Fantastic is set to begin this summer.
