Sure, we all know Jon Hamm as the star of Mad Men, but the guy has crazy range. He’s done a lot of comedy, some family stuff and even a little scifi—his episode of Black Mirror is one of the series’ best. And now he’ll return to that genre in an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-finalist play Marjorie Prime.
The 2015 theatrical dramedy by Jordan Harrison is about Marjorie, an elderly and ill former violinist who starts to use new technology that allows you to live with holographic recreations of your deceased loved ones. Hamm would be Walter, Marjorie’s late-husband, as she remembers him from decades past. You can imagine how that premise is used to dissect issues of aging, death, memories and more.
Michael Almereyda, director of the Ethan Hawke Hamlet, Cymbeline and most recently, Experimenter, has adapted Harrison’s play and will direct the film.
This sounds like fertile, sci-fi ground for Hamm and Almereyda but all of it surely hinges on who gets cast as Marjorie. She’s the lead, the anchor, and it’s through her that the film works or doesn’t. Jon Hamm has proved time and time again he can take that square jaw into unexpected places, of which this is another. But he’ll likely be playing second hologram in this one.
[Deadline]