Casino film to open festival
7th January, 2008
A film which follows the fortunes of a blackjack team is opening this year's South by Southwest Film Conference & Festival in Austin this march.
21, which stars some of Hollywood's finest actors including Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne, is a true story focusing on the fortunes of a group of students who learn how to beat the casinos at their own game.
The students make up the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Blackjack team - which was founded back in 1979 and continued to operate until recent years.
On March 28th, the film will be screened at cinemas across the US and is expected to be a box office hit – with gambling fans flocking to enjoy the show.
Shot in Las Vegas, the movie is based on best-selling book Bringing Down the House and will see Bosworth and Spacey, who is also producing the film, working together for the first time since Superman Returns.
Relatively unknown actor Jim Sturgess will play the central role of 20-year-old Kevin Lewis, who joined the team in 1993 and helped them to devise a mathematical formula for beating blackjack, known as card-counting.
