Ray Winstone is Soderbergh’s Caesar in “Cleo”

Steven Soderbergh’s insane 3-D rock-and-roll musical version of the story of Cleopatra has landed the third point on its central triangle, with Ray Winstone stepping into the role of Caesar. However, this article claims he’s playing Julius Caesar, whom Cleopatra had a thing with in her younger days, but earlier reports had claimed it was going to be Caesar Octavian, the more nefarious emperor who got involved in her later life with Marc Antony. So we’ll have to wait and see which Caesar Winstone will be portraying - depending on where Soderbergh’s going with the story. We do know that Catherine Zeta-Jones will be Cleopatra, and Soderbergh has his fingers crossed that Hugh Jackman will take up the role of Antony.

Asked how he landed on Cleopatra, Soderbergh said:

“I’ve always wanted to do a musical. All the ones that were coming along just weren’t for me. I wanted to do a real rock n roll musical like ‘Tommy.’ During my research it appeared that most were female driven. So I started thinking about female protagonists. I was thinking about Catherine. It doesn’t take too long to think about Catherine and famous female historical figures to get to get to Cleopatra. It’s like an Elvis musical in a way. It’s not serious. I mean, it’s historically pretty accurate but its sort of like ‘Viva Las Vegas’ meets ‘Tommy.’ I’m totally psyched.”

This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy. But it might also be a lot of fun. In the meantime, check out the first look at Soderbergh’s current and much heavier project, Che.