Brian Cox is one of my favourite actors, and his recent appearance in the excellent Red (Filmstalker review) was superb casting and made the film for me. Now he's going to appear as the reverend leader of a white-supremacist group.

However the casting choices and blurb for As Good as Dead are full of surprises, starting with just how much screen time Cox is going to receive, and it's not much.

Cary Elwes, Andie MacDowell, Laura Harring and Jesse Weixler are all set to star alongside Brian Cox, and a couple of these choices have me surprised.

The first is of Cox himself, playing this unsavoury character that runs the white-supremacy group and is murdered by a left-wing extremist played by Cary Elwes, who hasn't really been heard of since Saw, another strong role for him, or indeed since The Princess Bride, undoubtedly his best film.

Another piece of interesting casting is that Andie MacDowell will be playing the wife of the murdered Reverend who sets about sending the members of the group after Elwes' character for revenge. Now it's not often that we see MacDowell playing anything but a nicey-nicey character, or talking about how some cream can help delay the need for plastic surgery.

The story from Empire also tells us that Laura Harring and Jess Weixler are starring in the film as the Neighbour and Wife of Elwes character respectively.

As Good as Dead is being directed by Jonathan Mossek who co-wrote the script along with Erez Mossek and Eve Pomerance.

Empire also tells us that the writers are working on two other rather different scripts, Good Day For It is a modern day western where a man returns to town to wipe out the gang who exiled him, and The Shadow of the Shah, which is the biographical film of the last Shah of Iran's twin sister and her fight to lead women's rights up to the 1979 revolution.

Those scripts sound great ideas, and all very different to what Hollywood is churning out day after day, and that leads me to believe that As Good as Dead is going to offer something a little different too, it certainly seems that way with the casting that's already announced.