Kate Bosworth to Star in Blackjack Movie "21"

2007 February 11, Erana Hansen

Kate Bosworth is set to play a starring role in Columbia's blackjack movie titled "21". Australian Robert Luketic is directing the film.

The movie will tell the story made famous by the non-fiction best-seller, Bringing Down the House - the story of a group of young MIT grads who are taught a system to beat the casinos through a method of counting the cards in a Blackjack deck. The team rakes in millions of dollars in the exciting adventure, before internal disputes and bickering result in the operation crashing down around them.

Kate Bosworth is set to play an unsuspecting geek who joins the team. The film was scheduled to begin shooting in March in Las Vegas and Boston, but Kate Bosworth has been sighted in Las Vegas with Kevin Spacey already.

The film boasts a star-studded cast. Kevin Spacey is playing the MIT lecturer who teaches and mentors the young blackjack players, whilst Laurence Fishburne will play the dedicated and ruthless security contractor who is hired by the casinos to bring the team down. Initially, the MIT team make his job difficult through a range of innovative techniques – they use a range of disguises and employ spotters who are able to give the team advance notice of danger. However, the arrogance of some team-members leads to conflict, and this is their undoing in the end.

Bosworth and Spacey have worked together previously on Superman Returns.

The star of the movie will be played by a relatively unknown actor, Jim Sturgess. He will play 20-year-old MIT grad Kevin Lewis, who was invited to join the blackjack team in 1993. The team are able to get an edge over the casinos through the use of a mathematical system for beating blackjack, called card-counting. Card-counting is legal, but casinos do not take kindly to it, and will ask card-counters to leave their premises. If the card-counters return, casinos may employ brutal tactics, as Kevin and his MIT friends were to find out.

Lisa Lapira, Josh Gad and Masi Oka (Heroes) have also joined the cast of the film. Kevin Spacey is the producer.