Published at 2:53 PM on October 31, 2008

By Henry Freedland

Inglorious Basterds completes casting with Jackson, Cheung

We've been watching the casting fill up on Quentin Tarantino's WWII film Inglorious Basterds for some time now, and today the saga seems to be closing down. The Playlist reports that Samuel L. Jackson muscled his way into a part (after being miffed he wasn't being considered for any) as a rarely present narrator.

And Maggie Cheung, who hasn't done a whole lot since winning the Cannes Best Actress prize in 2004 for Clean, will play Madame Mimieux, the French cinema matron who cares for Basterd's protagonist Shoshana (Mélanie Laurent) when she is being searched for by the Nazis. Cheung won the role over other European actresses once rumored for the part including Catherine Deneuve, Nastassja Kinski and Isabelle Hupport.  

The film, which is not (as has often been thought) a remake of a 1977 Italian movie Inglorious Bastards (notice the "a"), began filming this month.

Related links:
News: Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards shooting in October
Inglorious Basterds on IMDb
NYmag: We've got Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards script

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