Josh Brolin’s ‘W’ Glamour Shot Overshadows Critical Dick Cheney Casting Call

W didn’t just make studios nervous; the script gave lots of movie stars cold feet, too. Stone denies rumors that Robert Duvall turned down Cheney. And he won’t comment on reports that he’s talking to Paul Giamatti about the part. But casting has clearly been challenging. ”You’d be amazed how many male stars of a certain age in Hollywood are Republicans,” says Bill Block, CEO of QED, one of the film’s producers. ”I’m not going to name names, but a lot of them just didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

According to Stone, even some of the town’s young Democrats couldn’t be persuaded. ”They hate Bush so much, they can’t understand why I’d want to make a movie about him,” he says. ”They hate him so much, they can’t even imagine themselves playing him or playing anybody around him.”

We agree Giamatti would make a decent Cheney, but we’re for a little more adventuresome casting to wash out the flat taste of the script (the recently distributed version of which, EW also notes, is at least a couple of drafts old). On one hand, Woody Harrelson would seem to fit the bill with just enough irony to hold us over to the closing credits, but a Stone/Val Kilmer reunion would be truly Earth-shattering. Or, no! Get Javier Bardem, who conveniently just quit Rob Marshall’s Nine and is Brolin’s BFF anyway. Maybe Robert Downey Jr? Cate Blanchett? Hurry!

(source)