Billy Slaughter Joins Amazon’s ‘The Burial’; ‘Oppenheimer’ Adds Trond Fausa

EXCLUSIVE: Billy Slaughter (The Card Counter) has boarded Amazon Studios’ film The Burial, which is currently in production in New Orleans.

He joins an ensemble that also includes Jamie Foxx, Tommy Lee Jones, Jurnee Smollett, Mamoudou Athie, Bill Camp, Dorian Missick, Pamela Reed, Amanda Warren, Jim Klock and Alan Ruck, as previously announced.

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Director Maggie Betts’ film is based on the New Yorker article by Jonathan Harr. It follows a charismatic personal injury lawyer famous for his impressive track record and loudly unconventional approach who decides to help a funeral home owner save his family business from a predatory corporate behemoth. In a move to bring emotional resonance to a dry contract law case, the lawyer digs up an unexpected and complex web of race, power and oppression that forces everyone to examine long-buried prejudices they didn’t know they had.

Details with regard to the character Slaughter is playing have not been disclosed. Doug Wright adapted the screenplay. Bobby Shriver is producing for Bobby Shriver Inc., along with Double Nickel Entertainment’s Adam Richman and Jenette Kahn, Foxx and his producing partner Datari Turner, and Maven Pictures’ Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray.

Slaughter will next be seen in the Cinedigm thriller The Ravine, alongside Teri Polo, and 3000 Pictures’ Where the Crawdads Sing, alongside David Strathairn and more. The actor recently wrapped filming on the comedy The Estate, opposite Kathleen Turner, Anna Faris and Toni Collette, and recently appeared in Paul Schrader’s film The Card Counter, as well as the hit NBC series The Thing About Pam, starring Renée Zellweger. He’s also been seen in such features as Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, Bill & Ted Face the Music, Richard Jewell, The Highwaymen, Billionaire Boys Club, Geostorm, Happy Death Day, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, The Magnificent Seven, Bad Moms, Midnight Special, Daddy’s Home, The Big Short, Trumbo and Focus, among others. Additional TV credits include Secrets of Sulpher Springs, Women of the Movement, On Becoming a God in Central Florida, Mindhunter, Queen Sugar, The First and Treme.

Slaughter is repped by Action Talent Agency in New Orleans and Pinnacle Theatrical Talent.

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Courtesy of Joachim Drageland

EXCLUSIVE: Trond Fausa (Lilyhammer) has signed on for a role in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer for Universal Pictures.

He joins an all-star ensemble led by Cillian Murphy, which also includes Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Matthew Modine, Dylan Arnold, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, David Dastmalchian, Olli Haaskivi, Jason Clarke, James D’Arcy, Michael Angarano, Guy Burnet, Danny Deferrari, Matthias Schweighöfer, Harrison Gilbertson, Emma Dumont and Devon Bostick, as previously announced.

Nolan’s latest is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. Murphy stars as Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist whose work on the Manhattan Project led to the creation of the atomic bomb. Nolan is directing from his own script and producing alongside Emma Thomas and Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven. The film is slated to debut in theaters on July 21, 2023.

Fausa is a Norwegian actor and filmmaker best known for starring in the Netflix crime drama series Lilyhammer, alongside Steven Van Zandt and more. He has twice won the Amanda—the top Norwegian film award—for his turn in 2006’s Den Brysomme Mannen, and for the short film Alene menn sammen, which he directed. The actor has also appeared in the Netflix series The Innocents, alongside Guy Pearce and Johannes Haukur Johannesson; as a series regular in the Liz Meriwether-created Fox pilot Thin Ice; and as a lead in both MTV3’s Neste Somer and Netflix’s Norsemen. He is represented by Crimson Media and Denton Brierly in the UK.

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