Jamie Foxx To Do Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchainedby Wilson Morales
June 22, 2011
After months of searching for the right actor, with Will Smith having turned down the role, director Quentin Tarantino chosen Oscar winner Jamie Foxx to star in ‘Django Unchained.’
Foxx will play the title role of Django, a freed slave who teams up with a German bounty hunter to take on an evil plantation owner in order to retrieve his long-lost love, Broomhilda.
Already cast in the film are Leonardo DiCaprio as the sadistic slavemaster Calvin Candie, and Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” star and Oscar winner Christoph Waltz as Django’s friend and mentor, Dr. King Schultz. Samuel L. Jackson also has a role in the film but his character hasn’t been named as of yet.
The Weinstein Company will distribute the pic stateside, while Sony Picture will handle the release overseas.
Variety stated that Tarantino originally offered the role of Django to Will Smith, who decided to pass on the sure-to-be controversial part. Tarantino met with Idris Elba, Terrence Howard and Chris Tucker in recent weeks before settling on Foxx.
Foxx got his start as a comedian ‘In Living Color’ and won an Oscar in 2005 for playing musician Ray Charles in Taylor Hackford‘s biopic ‘Ray.’ He will next be seen in ‘Horrible Bosses‘ on July 8 playing character named ‘Motherf*cker Jones.’
