Casting Call: The Glass Castle
In which we suggest who should star in the next big adaptation, remake, or historical film.
When Jeannette Walls was a child, her father Rex promised one day he would build the family a palace of glass to live in. He carried the blueprints for the “glass castle” with him wherever they moved. It was one of the few constants she found in her life, which she recounts in her 2005 memoir, The Glass Castle. Her dysfunctional, impoverished family moved across the country at a moment’s notice, fleeing tax collectors, wrathful creditors, and undesirable employment. Rex’s get-rich-quick schemes and Rose Mary’s art projects often fell by the wayside or failed entirely, and Jeannette and her siblings Lori, Brian, and Maureen grew up in a radically unstable household. Each child found a different way of seeking respite from the chaos of home life, and at the memoir’s bittersweet conclusion, each finds his or her own path into the world, detached from the parents.
The Glass Castle, which spent 261 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold over two million copies, was optioned early on by Paramount, but then acquired by Lionsgate in 2012. And last year, Jennifer Lawrence came on board Lionsgate’s project to play Jeannette. She also plans to produce the film alongside Gil Netter (Life of Pi, The Blind Side, Fever Pitch). The project seems to be slowly but surely moving forward—during a conference call Friday, studio CEO Jon Feltheimer announced that Lionsgate was in negotiations with a big-name actor to play Rex. Still no word on the name, though rumors have floated Mark Ruffalo as a contender. So, while we await the final decisions, we’ve got a few suggestions for actors in Jennifer Lawrence’s league to play the Walls family in the film.
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