George Clooney’s Directing The Phone Hacking Film. So We’re Casting It

Ok, so we're not really casting the film, but who's playing who?

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by Sophie Wilkinson |
Published on

With news that George Clooney is to direct the story of the UK phone hacking scandal, we're going to give him some casting suggestions. Based on journalist Nick Davies' book, Hack Attack, George's film will tell the story of how journalists at The News of the World hacked into people's phones - both celebrities and non-famouses alike. Besides MP's expenses, it's the biggest scandal to hit the country, and directly affected thousands of people, it's alleged.

'This has all the elements – lying, corruption, blackmail – at the highest levels of government by the biggest newspaper in London,' Clooney's statement read, reports The Guardian: 'And the fact that it’s true is the best part. Nick is a brave and stubborn reporter and we consider it an honor to put his book to film.'

But, who's going to play who in the film?

Rebekah Brooks

We've already earmarked Jessica Chastain for the role of CEO of News International (the parent company of the News of the World) Rebekah Brooks. With the assistance of some curling tongs, she should easily be able to get her acting chops around the role of the charming-yet-stony-faced journalist.

Andy Coulson

The News of the World's editor, who had an affair with Brooks, could so well be played by Sam Riley, you know, the guy who played Maleficent's sidekick? Simply because he looks a tiny bit like Andy. Or, if George goes full Hollywood, Justin Timberlake, who did so well playing the semi-bad-guy as Facebook's Sean Parker in* The Social Network*.

Rupert Murdoch

The owner of loads and loads of TV channels, newspapers and websites (Myspace, anyone?) will be played by Anthony Hopkins, because he's old and gruff and can do sinister quite well.

Wendi Deng

The wife of Rupert, whose most prominent moment was slapping a man for throwing a custard pie into Rupert's face at his grilling, will be played by Lucy Liu. This was basically decided by all of Twitter the very moment of the slap, back in 2011.

Tony Blair

Michael Sheen will play him, obviously.

David Cameron

Benedict Cumberbatch. No, he looks nothing like Cameron, but you'd have to put him somewhere.

Sienna Miller

None other than Sienna Miller - it's not as if she's aged much in the past 15 years.

Jude Law

He'll be played by Raff Law, Jude's son. Which might make scenes between him and Sienna a little awkward, but hardly as awkward as the time private details of his dad and Sienna's relationship were all over the tabloids

We'd go on and on, but hacking victims were so numerous that we can't exactly cast them all - there are 4,000 potential hacking victims, and we don't think all of them will even feature in the film. Plus, there's no-one so foppish as Hugh Grant to play Hugh Grant anymore, or anyone we'd like to cast as Max Clifford.

Regardless, we're really looking forward to how George approaches the story, hopefully there'll be a Matt Damon here or a Brad Pitt there - what would a George Clooney film be without a few of his mates?

Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.

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