Orlando, Djimon to play SA cops

Cape Town - South Africa's status as a hot destination for international filmmakers (Safe House) has got another boost with the announcement that Orlando Bloom and Djimon Hounsou will co-star as South African cops in the action-thriller Zulu.

Screen Daily reports that Orlando Bloom and Djimon Hounsou have both signed to star in Zulu, a thriller based on the novel by Caryl Férey.

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, the film tells of two cops (played by Bloom and Hounsou) who are assigned the job of tracking down the murderer of the 18-year-old daughter of a champion rugby player.

Apartheid

During the course of the investigation it's revealed that the murder is connected to South Africa's apartheid history.

French filmmaker Jérôme Salle is attached to direct the film. Salle had previously written the film Anthony Zimmer, which was later remade as The Tourist, starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.

Production on Zulu is scheduled to begin this July in Cape Town.

The novel's synopsis reads as follows:

Ali Neuman, the chief of the Cape Town police crime unit, investigates the murder of 18-year-old Nicole Wiese, found one morning in the South African city’s botanical gardens with her skull crushed in. Since the victim’s father was a member of the Springboks rugby team that won the world championship in 1995, the case attracts heavy press coverage. The trail leads Neuman to an extraordinarily brutal narcotics gang with links to a former apartheid official. The good guys don’t walk away from their encounters with the bad guys unscathed. This is a welcome addition to the growing ranks of crime books set in South Africa - powerful and unflinching in its portrayal of evil both mindless and calculating.

Hounsou previously shot Blood Diamond, in which he starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and for which he received an Oscar nomination, in South Africa. Bloom will next be seen reprising his Lord of the Rings character Legolas in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, to be released on December 14.