Kill Your Darlings director John Krokidas will be reuniting with his two stars Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan for Young Americans. The film, whose script landed on the Black List back in 2010 under the title College Republicans, centers on future Republican strategists Lee Atwater and Karl Rove in 1973 when Rove was making a run for national president of the College Republicans organization. Radcliffe will be playing Atwater and DeHaan will be Rove.
Atwater and Rove have carved themselves a legacy for having engineered political campaigns that used tactics that could be considered legally and ethically questionable. Atwater ultimately rose to become chairman of the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for President George Herbert Walker Bush. Rove would manage George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. By becoming a key advisor to the president during his eight years in office, he earned the nickname “Bush’s Brain.”
In 1990, after being diagnosed with brain cancer, Atwater converted to Catholicism and sent apologizes to many of the politicians he felt he wronged with his tactics over the years.
Rove has previously been depicted on film by Toby Jones in Oliver Stone’s W.
Radcliffe is of course perhaps best known for the Harry Potter franchise, but post-Potter he has taken on a variety of roles that have shown a flexibility that he didn’t get a chance to display in that franchise. DeHaan has previously gained experience playing villains in both Chronicle and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Previously the script had been set to go with director Richard Linklater attached and Shia LaBeouf and Paul Dano set to star as Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.
Via Deadline.
