THE CONSPIRATOR, directed by the great Robert Redford has already started production in Savannah Georgia and The Playlist scored some spy photos that gave us first look at James McAvoy and Evan Rachel Wood if they had lived in the 1800s. 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.
Robin 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. I wonder if McAvoy could do the accent.
Rachel Wood plays Mary’s daughter Anna Surratt and recently joining the cast is Justin Long as McAvoy’s character’s best friend, a one-armed Civil War veteran. The website also says Toby Kebbel (Rocknrolla) will play John Wilkes Booth
