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Following his Best Actor win at the 2023 Academy Awards, Brendan Fraser has only appeared in one film, which was a small (yet memorable) role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Now, the Oscar winner is gearing up for his next project as he’s been tapped to star as Dwight D. Eisenhower in Pressure, a film based on a play about the days leading up to D-Day on June 6, 1944.
Brendan Fraser, who won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Darren Aronofsky’s 2022 film The Whale, will star in the film alongside All of Us Strangers and Ripley star Andrew Scott, who will be portraying Britain Chief Meteorological Officer James Stagg, a key figure in the lead-up to the D-Day assault on Normandy.
The screenplay was written by director Anthony Maras and David Haig, who penned a critically acclaimed stage play about the same moment in history, “which explores the personal and military stresses on Stagg and how tensions grew between the teams with different weather forecasts for the date of the proposed D-Day,” according to Deadline.
In addition to the tense government maneuvers in the days leading up to D-Day, producers also say the film will capture “the scale of the landings,” which really isn’t something that’s been seen in cinema since Saving Private Ryan.
Here is the official synopsis for the project:
“In the 72 hours leading up to D-Day, all the pieces are in place except for one key element — the British weather. Britain’s Chief Meteorological Officer James Stagg is called upon to deliver the most consequential forecast in history, locking him into a tense standoff with the entire Allied leadership. The wrong conditions could devastate the largest-ever seaborne invasion, while any delay risks German intelligence catching on.”
“With only his trusted aide Captain Kay Summersby to confide in, and haunted by a catastrophic D-Day rehearsal, the final decision rests with Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower. With only hours to go, the fate of the war and the lives of millions hang in the balance.”
Director Anthony Maras, an Australian filmmaker, has previously helmed the 2018 film Hotel Mumbai.