Chris Evans, Tom Holland Cast In Netflix's The Devil All The Time
These two onscreen superheroes are teaming up outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Spider-Man actor Tom Holland and Captain America star Chris Evans have been cast in Netflix's upcoming original film The Devil All the Time, the streamer revealed on Wednesday.
Rather than issuing a neatly packaged, prim-and-proper press release announcing the project and its cast, Netflix took to one of its many social media platforms, this time the See What's Next Twitter account that shares news direct from inside the company's headquarters, to break the news.
The post details that Holland and Evans will appear in The Devil All the Time, directed by The Sinner's Antonio Campos from a script he co-wrote with Paulo Campos, as will a host of other A-list actors. Good Time star Robert Pattinson, It icon Bill Skarsgård, Crimson Peak and Alice in Wonderland actress Mia Wasikowska, and Sharp Objects breakout Eliza Scanlen comprise the central cast of the film.
Apart from the casting announcements, the only other information about The Devil All the Time that was provided in the tweet was a short description: it's being billed as a "midwestern gothic involving a serial killer couple, a faith-testing preacher, and a corrupt local sheriff in a story told across two decades."
TheWrap obtained additional insight into The Devil All the Time's plot thereafter, sharing that Holland will play Arvin, the son of the central protagonist, Willard Russell. The outlet also offered a more in-depth plot summary: "In a place called Knockemstiff, Ohio, a forgotten backwoods of this country, where a storm of faith, violence, and redemption is brewing. Out of desperation to save his dying wife, Willard Russell turns to prayer which succumbs to sacrifice. This sets protagonist Arvin, Willard's son (Holland), on his path from bullied kid to a man who knows when to take action. The Devil All the Time involves a nefarious cast of characters that is told across two decades."
Additionally, IMDb lists Evans as portraying Lee Bodecker, Pattinson as playing Roy Lafferty, and Wasikowska as set for the role of Sandy Henderson.
In Donald Ray Pollock's 2011 novel of the same name, upon which the film is based, Lee Bodecker is a no-good cop "whose sister Sandy and her perverted serial killer husband, Carl Henderson, troll the interstates for male hitchhikers he refers to as 'models'" (via Publisher's Weekly). If the cast information on IMDb is correct, Evans is the corrupt sheriff and Wasikowska is one half of the serial killer duo. As for Pattinson's Roy Lafferty, that character in the book is a "visiting preacher at the Coal Creek Church of the Holy Ghost Sanctified" whose daughter, Leonora, lives with Arvin's grandmother, Emma.
We aren't in the business of making bets, but if we were, we'd put money on Skarsgård playing Carl Henderson. He did scare the entire world with his performance as Pennywise in Andy Muschietti's It from 2017 (and he'll do it again this year in It: Chapter Two), so a role such as Carl would be a fantastic fit for the rising master of spook. The youngest actress on the current Devil All the Time cast roster, Scanlen is likely to embody a more doe-eyed character, maybe Leonora. While she's a bit old to play Pattinson's daughter (she's 20 to his 32), maybe makeup and costuming will widen the age gap between them if they truly do portray father and daughter in The Devil All the Time.
Based on the morsels of information Netflix has offered about the film, it sounds as though The Devil All the Time will feel slightly like True Detective, particularly in terms of its storytelling approach. Both the first and third seasons of the anthology series, which just returned to HBO for a new installment earlier this month, were spread out over several decades, something viewers really enjoyed. The Devil All the Time might also be a little reminiscent of Bad Times at the El Royale, Drew Goddard's super-stylized neo-noir thriller from 2018 that featured a cult leader who pushed his followers to their breaking points, a false priest, lots of government cover-ups, and plenty of murders. However, the film is an adaptation Pollock's novel, so the true mood and tone of The Devil All the Time can be found on the page.
For even more info on The Devil All the Time, here's the official synopsis for book: "Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There's Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can't save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his "prayer log." There's Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America's highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There's the spider-handling preacher Roy and his ... virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte's orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right."
The Devil All the Time is another ambitious film Netflix has invested in. The streamer ramped up its original content in 2018 — spending a reported $8 billion (85 percent of its new spending budget) on original television series and movies, releasing 80 original films throughout the year, and striking distribution deals with major studios to secure movies like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle after their limited-time-only theatrical runs. Netflix plans to roll out even more fantastic originals in 2019, but The Devil All the Time may not be one of them, as it reportedly isn't expected to hit the platform until 2020.