Following an illustrious 20-year career in front of the camera, Ewan McGregor is now heading behind it. For his directorial debut he’ll take on the upcoming film adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral, which he is already set to star in alongside Jennifer Connelly and the newly-added Dakota Fanning.
“I’ve wanted to direct for years and wanted to wait until I found a story that I ‘had’ to tell, and in this script I knew I had found that story,” McGregor said in a statement. “I’m looking forward to the challenge of being on both sides of the camera, especially knowing I’ll be working with Jennifer and Dakota.”
Shooting from an adapted screenplay by The Lincoln Lawyer scribe John Romano, production will begin in September.
Philip Noyce, the director of two Jack Ryan adventures with Harrison Ford as well as Angelina Jolie thriller Salt, was set to helm, but exited after a decade of being attached to the project.
Narrated by recurring Roth character Nathan Zuckerman, American Pastoral is a look back at the life of McGregor’s character Seymour “Swede” Levov, whose daughter sets off a bomb to protest America’s involvement in Vietnam. Set amid the high drama of the counterculture, war and Watergate, the novel explores how the terror act sends shock waves through Levov’s family life.
The adaptation escalates McGregor’s already-packed schedule of late. As well as appearing in Johnny Depp flop caper Mortdecai, he’s taken on kick-ass thriller Son of a Gun, John le Carre spy drama Our Kind of Traitor, Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis biopic, and Jane Got a Gun, the troubled western once helmed by Lynne Ramsey. He’s even playing both Jesus and Satan in the upcoming Last Days in the Desert, which debuted at this year’s Sundance film festival.
