“The Hunger Games” star Wes Bentley and Brit Marling (“Another Earth”) have joined the Abraham Lincoln biopic “The Green Blade Rises,” which “Tree of Life” helmer Terrence Malick is producing.
Focusing on Lincoln’s childhood years, Bentley will play Honest Abe’s first teacher, while Marling will play Nancy, his biological mother.
The film centers on the formative years of the future-president, including the time he was abandoned by his father in the harsh winter wilderness, before he left home and embarked on a political path.
Diane Kruger (“Inglourious Basterds”) and Jason Clarke (“Public Enemies”) play Lincoln’s step-mother and father, respectively.
“The Green Blade Rises” is the directorial debut of Malick collaborator AJ Edwards, who also wrote the screenplay. Malick, Nicolas Gonda and Charley Beil are producing, with Joseph Krigsfeld, Jason Krigsfeld and Suzanne Deal Booth acting as executive producers.
In other Lincoln news, Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” which stars Daniel Day-Lewis as the Civil War-era version of the 16th president, opens later this year.
Marling is currently starring opposite Richard Gere in “Arbitrage.” She’ll soon be seen in Robert Redford’s “The Company You Keep.”