Update: It turns out that what seemed too good to be true was, in fact, too good to be true. In fact, neither Brad Pitt nor Harry Styles will be appearing in Faster, Cheaper, Better, according to Vanity Fair. Which is a bit of a bummer.
The rumour spread after a distributor, Vertice Ciné, published the casting news on its website after winning the film's international distribution rights. From there, extreme thirst ensured it zipped around the world while the truth was still trying to remember the password for its Twitter account.
But reps for both actors-slash-heartbreakers have confirmed that this was all just wishful thinking, and that they won't be either rolling up their sleeves as a hardworking, hard-drinking union man, or zipping up their cashmere hoodie as a rapacious tech billionaire.
*sigh*
We're going to go and rewatch Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood while listening to Fine Line, to try imagine what might have been.
Harry Styles and Brad Pitt, two men who have recently made a habit of reminding the world just how dashingly single they are, are set to star alongside each other in a new movie, according to film distribution website Vértice Cine.
Faster, Cheaper, Better, which recently announced Nightcrawler and Velvet Buzzsaw director Dan Gilroy at the helm, is about the changes bought on by automation, with the IMDb synopsis saying it focuses on, "a union foreman, a young entrepreneur, an indoor farm executive and a tech billionaire [whose] lives are upended when automation and AI transform the world as we know it."
Casting two such high wattage stars would be a step up for Gilroy, who has previously worked with actors including Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo on both Nightcrawler and Velvet Buzzsaw. Speaking to Deadline the director said: “It’s a big multi-narrative film, set over two decades in multiple locales. We follow a group of inter-connected characters, as they deal with automation and AI changing their world, particularly the work world.”
This would be the latest in Brad Pitt's big second act of his career which has seen him move back into the focus of the camera after a few years producing films instead of starring in them. Last year the actor appeared in space drama Ad Astra and picked up an Academy Award for his role as chiseled, wisecracking stuntman Cliff Booth.
Booth sounds like the perfect preparation for playing a grouchy union foreman or an indoor farm executive (what, exactly, is an indoor farm executive?), while young Master Styles might well be the young entrepreneur, given his age.
The question that casting directors will have really had to wrestle with is whether the world is ready to see the original Brad Pitt and the closest the subsequent generation has to a Brad Pitt in the same movie. Are we ready for that? Loins, start girding.
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