Empire magazine have posted an exclusive look at The Devil’s Double which includes the first image of Dominic as Latif Yahia! A couple of pictures of Dominic with the real Latif have also been added to the gallery, courtesy of his official site.

As The Hurt Locker gears up for the Oscars and Green Zone nears release, a new kind of Iraq movie is being filmed in Malta, one with a very different focus. Starring An Education’s Dominic Cooper in a dual role, The Devil’s Double tells the true story of Latif Yahia, an Iraqi soldier who was forced to become a stand-in/decoy for Uday Hussein, the insane son of ruling tyrant Saddam.

Set in 1987, the film promises to be a middle-eastern Scarface-style gangster thriller, in which Yahia is thrown headlong into a world of outrageous opulence and raw, vicious violence – although, in this case, the fiction might not quite match the truly absurd reality. “We’re telling a soft story compared to what I’ve heard about this guy,” says director Lee Tamahori, who knows this turf, having helmed the OTT Bond movie Die Another Day and the gritty Kiwi gang drama Once Were Warriors.

The gangster element, however, is just one element of the story being told here. “Everybody likes gangsters,” says Tamahori, “and there’s no doubt that Uday is gonna drive right over the top of the story, but at the core we have an innocent man, a kidnapped soldier, who’s been dragged into this situation, which is equally compelling. So you’ve got these two characters playing off each other.

“On the one hand, it’s about a guy, Uday, who’s in love with himself. He has a mad, Oedipal complex – his father doesn’t love him, and we all know who his father is! He can’t have the respect that he wants from his father, and he’s wildly out of control: guns, money, women, death. There’s something extremely volatile about that. And then we’ve got this other guy, Latif, who came into this situation as an innocent and actually got himself out of it. So it’s about an innocent man being dragged into a hellish environment, trying to maintain a decency and an equilibrium, then trying to escape from it.”

We can expect to see the finished Devil’s Double sometime late this year or early next.

ScreenDaily is reporting that Dominic is in talks to join Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s new project Hello Darkness alongside Julie Christie and Imogen Poots:

‘Hello Darkness’ will be Glatzer and Westmoreland’s first film since their Sundance grand prize winner Quinceanera in 2006. Bobby Allen and Alexandra Stone are producing, with Steve Golin, Todd Haynes and Adam Shulman acting as executive producers.

Cooper is being lined up to play a tough, handsome, working class vampire who cruises the pubs of Newcastle on a Saturday night to feed on drunken young women, then returns to his faithful aging hemophiliac wife (Christie). But his status quo changes when he falls in love with an upper-class science student (Poots).

Source

Principal photography has started on location in Malta on the action drama, “The Devil’s Double.” Directed by “Die Another Day” director Lee Tamahori, the look at Saddam Hussein’s inner circle is being financed by the Belgian production company Corsan.

Dominic Cooper will portray the dual roles of (“Mama Mia!”) Hussein’s son, Uday and Latif Yahia, his body double. Ludivine Sagnier (“Swimming Pool”) will play Sarrab, Uday’s concubine and secret lover to Latif.

The screenplay, written by Michael Thomas, is based on Latif Yahia’s biographical novel.

Source

A lovely new photoshoot has been added to the gallery! Huge thanks to Kelly for the pictures. Shame about the tags, hopefully I’ll replace them with untagged versions soon!

The long list for this years BAFTAs has been released, with ‘An Education’ gaining nominations in many categories, including Dominic for Supporting Actor. This is fantastic news and we hope he will be added to the short list when it is announced on January 21! You can see the full list below.

The Long List

Over 6000 members of the Academy vote in three rounds to decide the winners of the Orange British Academy Film Awards and the Long List is the result of Round One of voting. With 220 films entered this year, this first round reduces the entered films down to fifteen in each category. Round Two voting will reduce these fifteen contenders down to the five nominations in each category.

Best Film
Avatar
District 9
An Education
Gran Torino
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
Moon
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
The Road
A Serious Man
A Single Man
Star Trek
Up
Up in the Air

Read the rest of this entry…

Dominic was spotted backstage after a performance of ‘Rock of Ages’ on Broadway on December 30, a couple of pictures are in the gallery.

Recent gallery/ events update:

• Vogue (UK) (December 2009) – thanks to ashcass
• Glamour (UK) (November 2009) – thanks to Lorna
• Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (30/10/09)
• “An Education” Los Angeles Photocall (02/10/09)
• Photoshoot #17 – thanks to Amanda