Movie Stars Latch Onto Cold Mountain

Posted on June 27, 2002

Miramax Films and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures announced that Donald Sutherland, Jena Malone, Kathy Baker, Ray Winstone, Ethan Suplee, James Gammon and Charles Hunnam have joined the cast of Cold Mountain, which is adapted and being directed by Anthony Minghella, based on Charles Frazier's bestselling and National Book Award winning Civil War novel of the same name. Principal photography on the film is scheduled to begin July 15th on location in Romania. The cast of Cold Mountain already includes Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Giovanni Ribisi, Brendan Gleeson and Charlie Hunnam.

Cold Mountain will reunite Minghella with his Academy Award winning production team from The English Patient. Editor Walter Murch, director of photography John Seale, costume designer Ann Roth and composer Gabriel Yared, who also worked together on the production of Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley, will be joined by production designer. In a story in which nature and weather play an integral part, the filmmakers have chosen to combine locations in the United States with the remote mountains and valleys of Transylvania, Romania, to recreate a primitive and unforgiving landscape.

The film is a co-production between Miramax and MGM and is being produced by Academy Award winner Sydney Pollack and William Horberg (through Pollack and Minghella's Mirage Enterprises) and Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa (through their Bona Fide Productions). Co-presidents of production Meryl Poster and Bob Osher, Steve Hutensky, evp of business affairs, and Jon Gordon, evp of production, are overseeing the project for Miramax.

Cold Mountain tells the story of Inman (Law), a wounded confederate soldier who is on a perilous journey home to his mountain community, hoping to reunite with his pre-war sweetheart, Ada (Kidman). In his absence Ada struggles to survive, and revive her father's farm with the help of intrepid young drifter Ruby (Zellweger).