Earlier this year, we brought you word that Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams were in talks for lead roles in director Tom Ford's A SINGLE MAN follow-up NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, and that Aaron Taylor-Johnson was also being eyed for a lead part. Gyllenhaal and Adams will indeed star in Ford's new movie, and Variety is reporting Taylor-Johnson has officially signed on for the film, as well as Michael Shannon.
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS is based on the 1993 Austin Wright novel Tony and Susan, and besides directing the adaptation, Ford also wrote the script and is producing.
Book synopsis from Amazon:
Fifteen years ago, Susan Morrow left her first husband Edward Sheffield, an unpublished writer. Now, she's enduring middle class suburbia as a doctor's wife, when out of the blue she receives a package containing the manuscript of her ex-husband's first novel. He writes asking her to read the book; she was always his best critic, he says.
As Susan reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a math professor driving his family to their summer house in Maine. And as we read with her, we too become lost in Sheffield's thriller. As the Hastings' ordinary, civilized lives are disastrously, violently sent off course, Susan is plunged back into the past, forced to confront the darkness that inhabits her, and driven to name the fear that gnaws at her future and will change her life.
Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal have been cast as Susan and Tony, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson will play "a mysterious figure who may pose a threat to Gyllenhaal’s family," and Michael Shannon will star as "a detective investigating the violent incident Gyllenhaal’s family is involved with."
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS will likely open sometime next year.