Robert Pattinson will be surrounded by Oscar winners and nominees both in front and behind the cameras in his upcoming project Water for Elephants, directed by Francis Lawrence (whose last feature was Will Smith’s I Am Legend) and based on Sara Gruen’s novel.
Pattinson’s co-stars Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz are both Oscar winners. Witherspoon won a Best Actress Oscar for James Mangold’s Walk the Line (2005), while Waltz was this year’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
Hal Holbrook, who’ll be playing the aged version of Pattinson’s character — a young traveling-circus veterinary during the Depression years — received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Sean Penn’s Into the Wild two years ago.
Additionally, Water for Elephants screenwriter Richard LaGravenese was nominated for his work on Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King (1991); production designer Jack Fisk (Sissy Spacek’s husband) and set decorator Jim Erickson shared a nomination for There Will Be Blood (2007); and costume designer Jacqueline West has been up for two Oscars: Quills (2000) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
Rodrigo Prieto was the Oscar-nominated cinematographer of Brokeback Mountain. And finally, one of Water for Elephants‘ three producers, Gil Netter, was shortlisted as one of the producers of this year’s Best Picture nominee The Blind Side.
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