Ewan McGregor to Make Directorial Debut with ‘American Pastoral’

Ewan McGregor will make his directorial feature film debut in Lakeshore Entertainment’s “American Pastoral” in addition to starring with Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning.

The long-in-development project is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel written by Philip Roth. Philip Noyce was previously attached to direct.

“Ewan’s talent goes far beyond his on-screen work and we’re excited to be working with a director who is as passionate as we are about telling the story of ‘American Pastoral,’” Lakeshore CEO Tom Rosenberg said.

“It’s a great privilege to be working with Lakeshore on Phillip Roth’s astounding novel ‘American Pastoral,’” McGregor said. “I’ve wanted to direct for years and wanted to wait until I found a story that I ‘had’ to tell and in this script I knew I had found that story.”

The screenplay was written by John Romano with filming scheduled for September in Pittsburgh, Pa. Producers aer Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi.

The story follows Seymour “Swede” Levov, a legendary high school athlete, who grows up to marry a former beauty queen and inherits his father’s business. His perfect life shatters when his daughter rebels by becoming a revolutionary and committing a deadly act of political terrorism during the Vietnam War.

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