The Colossus draws big names in statement on Iraq War

According to Variety, Rachel Weisz, Ian McKellen and Susan Sarandon have joined actor Colin Firth in the production of The Colossus.

The film, a colonial drama set in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century, will be helmed by rookie director Sean Mathias (Bent).

Mathias and Myer Taub wrote the script based on Ann Harries' novel Manly Pursuits.

The Colossus will give a fictionalized version of the events preceding the Boer War. The story will tell of a ornithologist hired to transport English songbirds to the recently deposed Cape prime minister (Cecil Rhodes). An ill Rhodes believes that only English bird song can cure him. The ornithologist falls in love with a firebrand political activist (Olive Screiner) and becomes entangled in a plot to stop the imminent Boer War.

The Colossus is likely to be a romantic Hollywood statement against the Iraq War. Britain, like the US was the dominant global power at the turn of the previous century. Both powers had at its height about 260,000 troops involved in a War to subdue a very small country. Both had ruthless characters like Lord Alfred Milner and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, imbued by a weird mix of liberal and conservative ideologies, set on instigating war.

The Little Film Co. is selling the $15 million project worldwide. Production is expected to begin September.

Rachel Weisz can be seen in the upcoming Darren Aronofsky film The Fountain and Ian McKellen can be seen this upcoming weekend in X-Men: The Last Stand.