Darren Aronofsky’s Noah has been on quite the casting spree. However, until today, we haven’t had any official word on who’ll play the antagonist. Thankfully, all of that’s changed, and Noah seems to have finally found his villain in Ray Winstone.
Geek Tyrant reports that the actor has entered negotiations to play the film’s antagonist. Liam Neeson once seemed like a major possibility for this part, as did Liev Schreiber, but neither of the actors made anything official. If negotiations go through as planned, Winstone will join a cast that includes Russell Crowe as the titular ark builder, Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth as two of Noah’s three sons and Emma Watson as a love interest for Booth.
The story of Noah doesn’t contain any full-fledged villains, but Aronofsky's regular D.P., Matthew Libatique, explained what we can expect from this antagonistic role via the aforementioned source:
“There's a big villain part, gotta have a villain in the story of Noah. Someone who's saying 'Listen, don't listen to him. We're fine! We don't need to build any ark. Don't be so alarmist! Don't be so fundamentalist.' You know? One of those guys. So it sounded like a lot of fun, actually.”
In other words, the antagonist is telling Noah to go against what God is telling him. The biblical account discusses people who acted similarly towards the ark builder, so this revelation regarding the film’s villain isn’t too surprising.
It’s nice to know that Noah found its villain, but he still needs a wife and (apparently) an oldest son. With Aronofsky beginning to shoot next month, both roles need to be cast as soon as possible. Jennifer Connelly’s been the frontrunner to play Naameh, Noah’s wife, for quite some time, but Julianne Moore has also surfaced as a possibility for that role according to Variety. Unfortunately, nobody’s surfaced as a contender to play Noah’s oldest son.
Paramount hopes to have Noah, his family, and his ark hit theaters across the country on March 28, 2014.
