Real quick now, in case you girls are wondering what James McAvoy is up to next, the Scottish thesp is going back in time, to the post-civil war era to be exact. According to Variety, McAvoy and Robin Wright Penn have signed on to star in THE CONSPIRATOR, to be directed by the great Robert Redford. Previously announced, THE CONSPIRATOR is about the infamous Mary Surratt, the woman President Andrew Johnson called as second only to John Wilkes Booth in the assassination plot of the 16th President of United States.
She sympathized with the Confederates and supplied Wilkes Booth and his accomplice weapons at her tavern after the murder took place at the Ford’s theater. Surratt’s son John was also alleged to be part of the conspiracy, was also put on trial but was never convicted.
Mary Surrat, however, was found guilty. She went down in history as the first woman ever executed by the United States federal government, and was hanged by the neck til dead in 1865.
Wright Penn is set to play Mary Surratt, maybe this will finally give Wright Penn the Oscar nomination that I think she should’ve gotten years ago for playing Jenny in Forrest Gump. McAvoy will play Frederick Aiken, an idealistic young war hero who reluctantly defends Surratt and in the process comes to believe she is innocent. Whether or not she was guilty enough to deserve a death penalty would be one of the issues tackled by this drama/thriller which would show the volatile days following the assassination, people feared that another civil war would happen again.
