'The Fault in our Stars' actor Ansel Elgort cast as concert pianist Van Cliburn in biopic

Ansel Elgort, who just starred in the Shailene Woodley hit The Fault in our Stars, will be taking on a very different role for his next film. He has been cast to star in Van Cliburn, a biopic on the late famed concert pianist.

Temple Hill producers Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen, Crystal Entertainment and The Johnson Group are putting together the project, Deadline first reported. Godfrey and Bowen also worked on The Fault in our Stars, in which Elgort played Augustus Waters.

Andrew Stern is writing the screenplay, based on Howard Reich’s biography of the same title. The project will tell the story of Cliburn’s meteoric rise as a piano prodigy, bringing the U.S. and Soviet Union together at the height of the Cold War by winning the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition at age 23 in 1958. Thanks to Nikita Kruschev, the judges were allowed to give him the prize.

The Texas native suddenly stopped performing for the public in 1978, but did reutrn to the stage sporadically later in life. He died in February 2013 from bone cancer at age 78.

Aside from Cliburn, Temple Hill is working on another John Green adaptaion, Paper Towns, which would star Nat Wolff.

image courtesy of ACE/INFphoto.com

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