It appears that Jacob Estes’ production woes for his latest film The Details were of the momentary glitch kind. The production according to Variety has been salvaged and will be set for a re-start next month as they have found a last minute replacement for James McAvoy in Tobey Maguire. We had reported that production had stalled and were clueless as to why.
Almost the same fit, mold and age, producers on The Details might have taken a look at the recently released trailer for Jim Sheridan’s The Brothers (see trailer here) to get a sense on what kind of dramatic range the thesp could offer. I imagine to a certain extent, that the Spidey roles can typecast an actor. Estes mentioned, “Maguire’s character is an everyman in the sense that he is composed of a morally ambiguous core”. The news piece also mentions that the supporting cast will include Ray Liotta and Dennis Haysbert.
So if we work with the hypothesis that production was shut down for a week, or two, then why did McAvoy need to jet out so quickly? Looking into our actor profile of McAvoy, there seems to be nothing on the horizon, but I think the role would be a bigger payday and less indie. Perhaps he might be re-teaming with Kevin Macdonald on The Eagle of the Ninth which will begin in August and at this point is still in the casting process. McDonald and McAvoy worked on The Last King of Scotland.