Elijah Wood’s going to have quite a year this year. He stars in the terrific GRAND PIANO later this spring, and his production company, SpectreVision, has a couple of releases this year – the Sundance film A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, and the horror comedy COOTIES, about monstrous preschoolers. Wood’s always had an affinity thowards genre films, but his latest project, SET FIRE TO THE STARS, shows that Wood still has an eye for challenging material. According to Hollywood Reporter, Wood will play John Malcolm Brinnin, the man most responsible for bringing poet Dylan Thomas (who will be played by Celyn Jones, who co-wrote the script with Andy Goddard) to the United States.
Elijah Wood has signed on to star in Set Fire to the Stars, a period movie exploring the relationship between poets John Malcolm Brinnin and Dylan Thomas.
The movie is set to begin filming at the end of the month and counts Kelly Reilly (Flight, Sherlock Holmes), Shirley Henderson (the Harry Potter movies) and Steven Mackintosh (Luther) in its cast.
Brinnin was a Canadian-born American poet who was instrumental in bringing Thomas, known as the “doomed poet,” into the U.S. for his famed visits in the early 1950s, leading up to his death in 1953. He had to deal with the drunken Welsh man’s increasingly erratic behavior, even writing about those final years in a 1955 book, Dylan Thomas in America.
The movie will explore the turbulent relationship between Brinnin and his hero, with shooting taking place on location in and around Thomas’ home of Swansea, Wales.
Source: THR and aintitcool
