With the central father-daughter character team of Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Chloe Moretz already in place on the indie drama The Rut, director Karyn Kusama has turned her attention to the other roles. And her first pick? Ray Liotta.
**The Rut **finds teenager Alexandria Heller (Moretz) looking to win her legendary hunter father Ray (Morgan)’s approval in an unorthodox fashion: she heads out into the wilderness to track down deer on her own. Huh: have we been watching too much Supernatural, or does anyone else get the impression that all Morgan offspring will engage in hunting of one form or another?
Now it sounds like she’ll have to face more than just the elements on her quest, as Liotta has been hired to play Bob Nutley, a hunting obsessed local who is a serious rival to Morgan’s character. With a name like “Nutley”, you just know he’s going to be trouble.
Kevin Caruso is behind the script, which keeps being described as a blend of Winter’s Bone, The Deer Hunter and Whale Rider, so we’re expecting coming-of-age lessons learned through violence and blood. Sounds good, though there’s no word when it will start shooting.
Liotta has a batch of movies awaiting release, including crime thriller Breathless, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly, killer thriller** The Iceman** and Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond The Pines.