Mark Rylance has found his first film to follow his recent Tony win for “Twelfth Night” and is in negotiations to co-star with Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s untitled Cold War thriller for DreamWorks.
Spielberg will direct and produce along with Marc Platt.
Story follows James Donovan, a prominent American attorney enlisted by the CIA during the Cold War to slip behind the Iron Curtain to negotiate the release of a pilot captured when his U2 spy plane was shot down over Russia. Details on Rylance’s character are unknown.
The Coen brothers wrote the latest script based on a pitch by Matt Charman.
The film’s production pace has picked up, with plans to start this fall after it was announced in April that Spielberg would direct before starting work on the adaptation of Roald Dahl book “The BFG.”
The role is Rylance’s first major job in a studio film. Besides “Twelfth Night,” the stage actor was nominated in the leading actor in a play category this year for his role in “Richard III.”
