Christoph Waltz To Play Gorbachev, Michael Douglas As Reagan In Mike Newell’s REYKJAVIK

Director Mike Newell (HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, GREAT EXPECTATIONS) has found the man who will sport the purple stained birthmark on his head while playing the last leader of the Soviet Communist Party for his new film. Academy-Award winner Christoph Waltz has been cast as Mikhail Gorbachev opposite Academy-Award winner Michael Douglas as Ronald Reagan in REYKJAVIK. Waltz is starring in the upcoming DJANGO UNCHAINED from director Quentin Tarantino while Douglas is headlining another based-on-a-true-story pic as Liberace in Steven Soderbergh’s “Behind The Candelabra” to air on HBO.

Filming on REYKJAVIK will begin in March 2013 in Reykjavik, Iceland and Studio Babelsberg, Germany. The script is from Kevin Hood (BECOMING JANE) with Ridley Scott producing.

“The film will offer the viewer a unique look into two larger than life figures who served as the catalysts for one of the most defining moments in our history, the end of the Cold War,” said Scott.

The upcoming drama is about the nuclear arms talks in 1986 between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan had labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” and less than a year after the summit Reagan would challenge Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in Berlin. Gorbachev initiated changes known as ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’ which melted the rigid Soviet system and liberated 15 republics of the Soviet Union to become independent states, thus ending the existence of the USSR in December 1991.

REYKJAVIK will be produced by Headline Pictures, Scott Free Productions, Participant Media and Mark Sennet Productions.

Source: Variety