As director Atom Egoyan puts the pieces (and the funding) together for Devil's Knot, the new dramatic film based on the West Memphis Three case, he's turned to someone he's worked with before to fill one of the leading roles: Colin Firth.
The actor, who co-starred in Egoyan's Where The Truth Lies, is on board to play private investigator Ron Lax, who has been a key crusader for the three men at the centre of the case. He agreed to help build the defense evidence for Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelly Jr after they were accused of, and imprisoned for, the murder of three eight-year-old boys in 1993. The trio served 17 years in prison (with Echols on death row) before being freed after a long campaign to prove their innocence.
Last December, Reese Witherspoon was castas Pam Hobbs, the mother of one of the victims, who started out thinking that the three were guilty, but eventually came to regard them as wrongly accused.
While The Exorcism Of Emily Rose team of Scott Derrickson and Paul Boardman adapted the first draft of the script from Mara Leveritt's 2003 book Devil's Knot: The True Story Of The West Memphis Three, Egoyan has been working with Boardman on a rewrite and they're now looking for the cash to get it started.