Lars von Trier has completed casting on his new disaster movie Melancholia, adding John Hurt (pictured below) to a cast that includes Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who won the best actress prize in Cannes last year with von Trier’s shocker Antichrist. Father and son Stellan and Alexander Skarsgard as well as von Trier regular Udo Kier complete the cast of the $7.5 million production, which starts shooting July 19 in Trollhattan, Sweden. Peter A. Jensen, head of von Trier’s production firm, Zentropa, and an executive producer on the project, described Melancholia as a “beautiful film about the end of the world,” but was cagey about disclosing any plot points. He would only hint that the story hinged on a “large object from outer space approaching Earth” that affects the planet’s inhabitants.”
