S. Craig Zahler’s new movie, The Bookie and the Bruiser, is ready to make a significant casting announcement today, with word that Patrick Schwarzenegger (Gen V, The White Lotus) will play a dual role opposite Vince Vaughn (Nonnas, Wedding Crashers) and Theo James (The Monkey, The Gentlemen) in the upcoming crime thriller.
What’s The Bookie & The Bruiser about?
According to Deadline‘s exclusive report, The Bookie and the Bruiser “is set in 1959 New York City and features a pensive Jewish fellow named Rivner (James) and an oversized Italian-American tough named Boscolo (Vaughn). Having served in World War II, the two return as changed men, no longer fitting into their old lives. Unwilling to take orders or play by the rules of polite society, the two partner up as a bookmaker and his enforcer and run an illicit gambling operation that proves highly profitable — but dangerous. Their operation thrives until they’re caught in a violent power struggle between the Mafia and an Irish gang, forcing them into a violent fight for survival.”
Who does Schwarzenegger play in the movie?
Schwarzenegger, who is Arnold’s son, will play twin brothers Augie and Bernard. Per the character descriptions: Augie is a desperate, down-on-his-luck gambler whose reckless attempt to escape a crushing debt puts Rivner and Boscolo in the cross-hairs of New York’s rival criminal factions, while Bernard is his respectable, family-man twin, whose life is violently upended by his brother’s deception and the dangerous men it brings to his door.
Zahler will direct The Bookie & the Bruiser from his own script. The project reunites Zahler with Vaughn, who starred in the director’s 2017 prison thriller Brawl in Cell Block 99 and the filmmaker’s 2018 crime thriller Dragged Across Concrete. Many know Patrick Schwarzenegger as Luke Riodan, aka Golden Boy from Gen V, which recently announced its cancellation after two seasons. You can also catch Schwarzenegger as Saxon Ratliff in the third season of Mike White’s The White Lotus. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger recently completed work on Florian Zeller’s upcoming thriller, Bunker, which follows a married couple of 17 years. The husband is an architect who accepts a controversial project to build a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire. This decision leads his wife to question their marriage.
What do you think about the combination of Schwarzenegger, Vaughn, and James starring alongside one another in a crime thriller? Does it disturb you to know that Arnold’s son is headlining films? Do you feel old? I do. It feels like just yesterday that I saw Arnie in Predator at the Rocky Point Drive-In. I can actually feel my bones turning to dust. Goodbye, cruel world.
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