Ian McKellen cast
in Colossus

Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz, Ian McKellen, and Susan Sarandon have signed to star in Katselas Films' Boer War political thriller The Colossus, the company announced Friday. Based on the novel Manly Pursuits by Ann Harries, The Colossus is being produced by Lisa Katselas (Richard III, Mrs. Dalloway) and directed by Sean Mathias (Bent), who wrote the screenplay with Myer Taub.

The Colossus is currently in preproduction, with principal photography expected to begin in fall 2006. The $15 million-budgeted movie tells of ailing archcolonist Cecil Rhodes's belief that he can only recover his health if he can hear the sound of English songbirds outside his window in Cape Town. Ornithologist Francis Wills is hired to transport 500 songbirds to Rhodes's home in South Africa where he falls in love with Olive Schreiner, a local firebrand activist fighting against Rhodes and trying to prevent the inevitable war against the Boers. Wills finds himself at the dangerous center of a daring plot to stop the war. (Sam Andrews, Reuters)