Kit Harington is Playing a Marvel-Like Superhero Actor in a New Film With Jessica Chastain, Kathy Bates, & Susan Sarandon

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Ok, but if Jon Snow was a superhero, what would his powers be? Blue Steel?

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In a story on The Hollywood Reporter which revealed Kathy Bates and Susan Sarandon were cast in an upcoming film, we found out Kit Harington will also have a part. But not just any part. He’ll play fictional actor John F. Donovan, “famous for playing a Marvel-style superhero — whose life and career are turned upside-down when his private correspondence with an 11-year-old fan is exposed and made to look indecent by a villainous gossip columnist (Jessica Chastain).”

French-Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan will be directing the film called The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. Sarandon will play Harington’s mom while Bates will play his manager.

In his conversation with THR, Dolan, who co-wrote the script for Donovan with fellow Canadian Jacob Tierney (writer-director of 2009’s The Trotsky), went to great lengths to dispel the notion that his new film will be a Hollywood satire, highlighting the fact that not a single scene in Donovan’s script is set in Los Angeles.

“It’s not about Hollywood itself,” explains Dolan. “It’s about the impact Hollywood has on your private life and how it can transform and distort your intimacy with others.”

Dolan says the film will be a very private take on how family, and specifically mothers — both Sarandon’s role as Donovan’s mother and the yet-to-be-cast role of the mother of Donovan’s 11-year-old pen pal — respond to their sons’ fame.

The film will start shooting in Spring of next year, what do you think of the premise?

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Jill Pantozzi
Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."