One of Empire's favourite actors, Chris Cooper, has signed up for a new version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, to be directed by Titus director Julie Taymor.
He'll be playing Antonio, one of the baddies of the piece, who along with Alonso the King of Naples (Jeremy Irons), deposes the sorcerer Prospero and his daughter Miranda and 'casts them adrift' on a boat. They end up marooned on an island for twelve years, but when the sorcerer gets wind that his detractors boat is passing by, he plots his revenge.
Now, in your normal run of The Tempest, Prospero is played by a man (even in Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books, the titular character's sandals were filled by Sir John Geilgud), but Taymor has never been one to follow convention, and this version has Prospera, who has already been cast - none other than Dame Helen Mirren. Miranda is played by Felicity Jones. The rest of the cast is also hugely impressive - Geoffrey Rush, Djimon Hounsou, Ben Wishaw, Alfred Molina, Russell Brand, and Reeve Carney.
As fascinating as this sounds, the version we had been hoping for was Shakespeare's The Tempest, directed by Jeffrey Tambor, which would have been dangerously amazing on every level. Can't have everything...