Cotillard Leads New Names Joining Michael Mann's 'Public Enemies'

Crime drama to be played out by an extraordinary cast

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Monday, January 28th 2008 at 7:37 PM

Who would have thought that the woman who starred in the awful A Good Year would go on to be more than a pretty face and ultimately an Oscar nominee? Well, that is exactly what Marion Cotillard did with La Vie En Rose and she is now about to join the cast of Michael Mann's crime drama Public Enemies.

Along with Cotillard come Channing Tatum, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Dorff and Jason Clarke who all join Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in the Depression-era drama in which Cotillard will play Billie Frechette, the lover of the country's most notorious gangster, John Dillinger (Depp).

Tatum will play outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd, Ribisi will play Alvin Karpis, Dorff is near a deal to play Homer Van Meter, and Clarke will play John "Red" Hamilton. That quartet repped a Dillinger gang that knocked off banks all over the Midwest during the Depression.

Bale plays Melvin Purvis, who was tapped by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover to lead a manhunt that established the FBI as the country's first federal police force after the G-Men killed Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater in 1934.

The film is set to get underway in Chicago on March 10th from a script written by Ronan Bennett, Ann Biderman and Mann. Universal Pictures is distributing.