Though he missed out on an Emmy nomination for his role in Show Me a Hero, Oscar Isaac has plenty to celebrate. The actor is in negotiations to star in Steven Spielberg’s new film, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, Variety reported on Friday.
The Star Wars actor would star alongside Mark Rylance, who featured in Spielberg’s recent The BFG, Bridge of Spies and his forthcoming Ready Player One. The movie would reportedly be shot in 2017.
The film will be adapted from historian David Kertzer’s book of the same name. It details a real scandal from Bologna, in 1858, after a young Jewish boy was taken from his family to be raised Catholic because he was secretly baptised as a child.
“The fate of this one boy came to symbolise the entire revolutionary campaign of Mazzini and Garibaldi to end the dominance of the Catholic Church and establish a modern, secular Italian state,” according to Kertzer’s website.
Tony Kushner, the writer behind Spielberg’s Lincoln and Munich, will write the script and Rylance will play Pope Pius IX, who regarded the kidnapped boy as his own child. Isaac’s role is currently unknown.
Isaac, known jokingly as the internet’s boyfriend who eats Cheetos with chopsticks, has undertaken a number of high-profile roles — most recently as the villain in X-Men: Apocalypse, pilot Poe Dameron in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens, in addition to starring in Ex Machina and A Most Violent Year.
His role as Yonkers mayor Nick Wasicsko in the David Simon-directed HBO mini series Show Me A Hero earned him a Golden Globe, but no Emmy.
