WASHINGTON, June 26 (RIA Novosti) – Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has become the latest Hollywood star to join the cast of a film about a Soviet serial killer during the reign of dictator Joseph Stalin, the entertainment industry site Deadline reported.
Hoffman has signed to act in “Child 44,” a film being co-produced by Oscar-nominee Ridley Scott that is based on the eponymous 2008 thriller novel by British writer Tom Rob Smith, Deadline.com reported.
The novel follows a disgraced Soviet security officer who investigates a series of child murders during Stalin’s reign, a wave of homicides that echoes the grisly real-life exploits of serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who murdered more than 50 women and children between 1978 and 1990.
Known as the “Rostov Ripper,” the Ukrainian-born Chikatilo was executed for his crimes in 1992.
The film is currently being shot in Prague with a cast that includes Hollywood stars Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace and Tom Hardy, Deadline reported. Sweden’s Daniel Espinosa is directing the film.
