A lot has been made of the “one book, two movies” (or more, if you’re “The Hobbit”) trend in Hollywood, but in the case of one massive classic from the American literary canon, two films are definitely better than one. But when it comes to an epic like “East of Eden,” who should star?
The movie, based on John Steinbeck’s book by the same name, is being considered for a split into two feature-length films according to writer/director Gary Ross. The project has been on the director’s to-do list since last year, when Jennifer Lawrence, who first worked with Ross on “The Hunger Games,” expressed an interest in playing a part in a big-screen version of Steinbeck’s classic novel.
A sprawling work that follows a family through three generations of drama, betrayal, ruin, and redemption, “East of Eden” packs an enormous amount of drama into its pages — and it’s no surprise that Lawrence is champing at the bit to play Cathy Ames, the sly and manipulative woman who carves a path of seductive destruction through the heart of the story and every character in it.
But where J-Law has always been attached to this project, there’s a total dearth of information about who will play the men whose brotherhood is torn asunder by her character. Which leaves us free to play Casting Couch!
Who are our picks for these hapless guys? Assuming that the same actors will be playing these characters in both their youthful and middle-aged incarnations, we’d like to pluck a pair of very A-list bros to fill the roles of the Trask brothers:
Ryan Gosling as Adam Trask
The first to be taken in by the lies of Cathy Ames, Adam is a very good man with a very big blind spot when it comes to his wife’s evil ways: so big, in fact, that he never even suspects that the twin sons he’s raising aren’t actually his.
It’s a challenging role that we’d love to see Gosling take on, almost as much as we want to see him sporting some early 20th-century farmer fashion.
Joseph Gordon Levitt as Charles Trask
Younger, stronger, smarter and crueler than his half-brother Adam, Charles is the one man to mistrust Cathy, as he senses the same darkness in her that he feels within himself… but that doesn’t stop him from sleeping with her.
JGL is no stranger to playing playboys onscreen, but this would be a chance for him to sex it up and enter some more sinister territory.
Between the iconic source material, the challenging characters, and the chance to work with Jennifer Lawrence, it’s certain that “East of Eden” will be a sought-after project for all of Hollywood’s finest.
But with no set start date, and with both its leading lady and director very busy with other things, it may be upwards of a year before we find out who the lucky guys actually are.
Who should join J-Law in “East of Eden?” Let us know in the comments below.
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