Casey Affleck to play angel Gabriel in Paradise Lost

He's often at his best playing eerily sinister roles, but Casey Affleck is in negotiations to star as one of the ultimate good guys in the new movie take on John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost .

Affleck is in line to play Gabriel, an angel who joins forces with Michael (Benjamin Walker) in the ultimate battle with Lucifer (Bradley Cooper), after the fallen one launches a full-scale assault on God.

You can banish any memories of interminable English literature lessons though, as this is going to be a 3D action epic as opposed to a boring sermon.

Alex Proyas ( The Crow , Dark City , Knowing ) is directing and the shoot is expected to begin in January 2012 in Sydney.

Deadline are also reporting that Camilla Belle ( The Ballad Of Jack And Rose , 10,000 BC ) has signed on to play Eve, of 'Adam and…' fame, in a storyline that runs parallel to the angelic warfare.

It's interesting that Proyas seems to be largely casting against type (it would have been more obvious were Cooper and Affleck's roles switched) so it'll be interesting to see the results.

Paradise Lost is expected to open in late 2013. Casey Affleck will next be seen in Brett Ratner's Tower Heist .

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.