Rachel Weisz Makes Three, Joins Robert Pattinson And Viggo Mortensen In ‘Maps To The Stars’

Brit actress Rachel Weisz is to join Robert Pattinson and Viggo Mortensen in David Cronenberg’s six-year labor-of-love project Maps to The Stars.

Today, French site Allocine (via The Film Stage) announced Weisz (The Mummy franchise, The Lovely Bones, The Whistleblower) as the film’s third key cast member.

With a script penned by veteran producer-screenwriter Bruce Wagner (State of the Union, White Dwarf) and Saïd Ben Saïd (Carnage, Passion, Far), Martin Katz, and German Integral Films producing, Indiewirereports that “plans are underway for production to begin in May all on a budget of $15 million.”

It will also be the first film Cronenberg shoots on US soil. Nutshelled, the plot arcs two film industry ex-child stars who become “ruined by Hollywood’s depravity.”

Back in 2006, Cronenberg was keen to separate the film’s premise from Robert Altman’s The Player, tellingVariety:

“You could say it’s a Hollywood film because the characters are agents, actors and managers, but it is not a satire like The Player.”

He added,

“Hollywood is a world that is seductive and repellent at the same time, and it is the combination of the two that makes it so potent. I won’t fall back on some clichés or simplistic sloganeering, because the culture and what it reveals about Western culture and the rest of the world is very complex.”

In May, when he and Pattinson were promoting the critically acclaimedCosmopolis at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, the director describedMaps To The Stars as “very extreme. It’s not obviously a very big commercial movie, and even as an independent film it’s difficult.”

Previous unsuccessful attempts by Cronenberg to raise money were put into focus when he toldTime that MapsTo The Stars made Cosmopolis “look easy to finance.”

Getting a high wattage cast for a very modest budget seems to be one of Cronenberg’s gifts, however, and this project is now moving forward — although Deadlinereports deals for all three stars have yet to be signed.

Weisz — coming off Oz: The Great and Powerful and The Bourne Legacy — is a powerhouse actress in her own right and an interesting addition to a mix that includes Mortensen (Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, Lord of the Rings) and a reloaded post-Cosmopolis Pattinson.

Throw in Cronenberg at the helm, and the possibilities get even more intriguing.