Dane DeHaan Will Be James Dean In Life, With Robert Pattinson As His Friend

Plenty of actors have played James Dean on screen over the years, and if you were going to pick which of Chronicle’s Dane DeHaan and Robert Pattinson was most likely to take on the legend, you might have thought the latter. However while both have signed up for the movie Life, it’s DeHaan who’ll be the Rebel Without A Cause star, according to ScreenDaily.

The movie is a biopic about Dean and the friendship he formed with Life magazine photographer Dennis Stock (Pattinson). Stock was an up-and-coming photographer who took a gig in the early 1950s with the Magnum agency to shoot an emerging actor called James Dean.

The two men soon connected, with their friendship being charted through the iconic photos taken over the course of their friendship, which included a road trip from Los Angeles to New York and Indiana. This trip occurred just before Dean became a star. A few months later, he died in a fatal car accident.

Anton Corbijn is directing the movie from a script by Luke Davies.

It’s not known if the film will suggest Dean was bisexual (as many believe he was), although with DeHaan’s next film getting homoerotic with Daniel Radcliffe in Kill Your Darlings, the young actor probably wouldn’t be against going period gay again.