Ridley Scott Wants the Kid From Adolescence and Hugh Grant for His Treasure Island
Scott already has Hugh Jackman attached to his Treasure Island. This week he named the two people he'd like next, and one of them is a genuinely inspired idea.
He said he hopes to cast Hugh Grant, and he hopes to get the kid from Adolescence — meaning Owen Cooper, who won an Emmy for that performance — as Jim Hawkins.
Why Cooper as Jim Hawkins makes sense
Adolescence asked a thirteen-year-old to hold a one-take interrogation opposite adult actors and he did it. Jim Hawkins is a boy who has to be smart enough to outmanoeuvre pirates and green enough to be seduced by one. That's a hard part to cast, and casting an actor who can carry silence is more useful than casting one who can carry a sword.
Why Grant is the funnier idea
Grant has spent the last decade converting himself into a character actor with a mean streak — Paddington 2, The Undoing, Heretic — and a Treasure Island with him somewhere in the rigging is a good use of that. Whether he'd be Long John Silver, with Jackman elsewhere, or something more oblique, Scott didn't specify.
Nothing here is signed. This is a director publicly floating names, which is a time-honoured way of applying gentle pressure to agents.
Scott's output rate being what it is, this will either shoot next spring or vanish entirely. There is rarely a middle option.