Tom Burke will play Orson Welles opposite Gary Oldman’s Herman J. Mankiewicz in the forthcoming David Fincher movie Mank.
Burke has appeared in the BBC productions The Musketeers, War & Peace, and Strike.
Amanda Seyfried has been cast as publisher William Randolph Hearst’s paramour, actress Marion Davies; and Lilly Collins will play Rita Alexander, Mankiewicz’s secretary, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Charles Dance, Arliss Howard and Ferdinand Kingsley round out the cast.
The Netflix bio pic will look at the writing of Citizen Kane and the relationship between Welles and Mankiewicz, who shared the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
Shooting on the black-and-white feature is scheduled to begin in November in Los Angeles.
The script for Mank was penned by Fincher’s late father, Howard Fincher, a former bureau chief for LIFE magazine.
Two decades ago, Mank was going to be Fincher’s followup to his 1997 film The Game, and star his future House of Cards leading man Kevin Spacey as the veteran screenwriter. However, the project stalled because of Fincher’s insistence that it be shot in black and white, like Citizen Kane.
Mank will be Fincher’s first feature film since 2014’s Gone Girl.
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