News > Cotillard and More Join Depp and Bale in Public Enemies

Written by David Morgan

Michael Mann has lured quite a cast to his newest project, a period crime drama called Public Enemies. The film is based on the lives of notorious prohibition-era gangsters like John Dillinger as well as those of the federal agents assigned to hunt them down. Johnny Depp had already been cast as the bankrobbing Dillinger, while Christian Bale had been cast as Melvin Purvis, the FBI man out to get him. Now, according to Variety, recent Oscar-nominee Marion Cotillard joins the cast as Billie Frechette, Dillinger's lover.

Channing Tatum will play outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd, Giovanni Ribisi will play Alvin Karpis, Stephen Dorff is near a deal to play Homer Van Meter, and Jason Clarke will play John "Red" Hamilton. Collectively they are Dillinger's core group of accomplices. Ronan Bennett, Ann Biderman and Mann wrote the current shooting script, based on a nonfiction history book by Brian Burrough, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34.