Here's a new movie poster for Son of a Gun (which will be released by A24 at some point) starring our beloved Ewan McGregor as a notorious criminal and rising star Brenton Thwaites as his young protege.
The protege is expected to help his mentor escape from prison.
A happy belated to Brenton who turned 25 yesterday! He leads The Giver next weekend (albeit with ample support from not one but two legends: Bridges & Streep) which is his fourth release already this year... so basically he's this year's version of Male Australian Hollywood is Trying To Make Happen. Australia is just relentless at hogging the male starring roles, yes? I have the sneaking suspicion he's going to be like the boy version of Alison Lohman and his age will be impossible to pin down onscreen for decades to come and maybe he'll play teenagers when he's 40? You'd think it would be creepy for a 25 year old to play 16 year old Elle Fanning's love interest in Maleficent but he didn't look a day over his 16th birthday in that, right? I once saw an interview with him where he claimed that The Blue Lagoon (1980), a movie he was then remaking, was "a hundred years old" which annoyed me in the highly specific way only smug teenage 'I know nothing of the past and I'm proud of it!' comments can. That movie is only 9 years older than he is so I guess he's 91.
But that's quite a tangent.
What I meant to say was that I find it interesting that young male stars often rise up through this movie phase of being "mentored" in one way or another onscreen by an older famous star (Cruise and DiCaprio did that, Brad Pitt did that spiritually with Robert Redford directing him who he was then often compared to, Jai Courtney is in the process of doing that with Bruce Willis and Russell Crowe, etcetera) like a sort of box office insurance policy in case they can't cut it since the older star will still draw crowds. Young female stars don't regularly have that phase usually just leading movies straightaway or co-starring with men instead of other women. Anne Hathaway is a notable exception given that her Princess Diaries and Prada film-carrying/star-making gigs would fit perfectly within this typically male star-building formula. Except that her vehicles were about make-overs... but let's not split hairs.