TORONTO — Brad Pitt will be in Canada early next year to star opposite Marion Cotillard in a romantic thriller.
Most of the still-untitled film, set during World War II, will be made in Morocco and England but plans call for some production to take place in Montreal.
Robert Zemeckis, who was in Montreal last summer to shoot The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is directing.
Pitt will play Max Vatan and Cotillard will play Marianne Beausejour. The two are special agents posing as a married couple who fall in love while on a dangerous mission in Casablanca and decide to settle down in London — but Max soon finds out the disturbing truth about Marianne.
According to reports, Pitt’s character is French-Canadian.
The script was written by Steven Knight, whose credits include the screenplays for the Montreal-shot chess drama Pawn Sacrifice and Canadian director David Cronenberg‘s Eastern Promises.
It won’t be the first time Pitt has worked in Canada.
Pitt was in Montreal for about a week in 2007 to shoot scenes for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Old Montreal doubled for both Paris and Moscow for the film, which was primarily made in New Orleans.
In 2005, Pitt was in the Calgary area and in Winnipeg to star in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Pitt’s wife Angelina Jolie made the 2004 thriller Taking Lives in Quebec.
Cotillard, currently working on the drama It’s Only the End of the World with Montreal director Xavier Dolan, won the Oscar for Best Actress for her work in 2007’s La môme.
Her films include Inception, Contagion and The Dark Knight Rises. Cotillard played a Canadian news anchor in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
Zemeckis won an Oscar for 1994’s Forrest Gump and has also directed Cast Away, The Polar Express and all three Back to the Future movies.
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