Sons of Anarchy actor Mitch Pileggi was among a trio of actors added to Axis Sally, an Al Pacino starring movie about Mildred “Axis Sally” Gillards, an American who was the voice of German propaganda broadcast to U.S. troops during World War II.
Earlier this week, Deadline reported that Pileggi will play John Kelly, the prosecutor at Gillars’ trial. Thomas Kretschmann (Avengers: Age of Ultron) was cast as Joseph Goebbels, the head of the Nazi propaganda machine. Lala Kent (Vanderpump Rules) will play Wlva, Kelly’s assistant.
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Axis Sally will be directed by Michael Polish (90 Minutes in Heaven) and written by Vance Owen and Darryl Hicks. It is based on William Owen’s book Axis Sally Confidential, and is produced by Randall Emmett, George Furla and Owen and Tucker Tooley. The executive producers are Ted Farnsworth, Williams, Vance Owens, Lydia Hull and MoviePass Films’ Tim Sullivan and Alex Eckert.
Meadow Williams (The Mask, Den of Thieves) is playing Gillars and Pacino will play the attorney who represented Gillars after she was put on trial for treason. Swen Temmel (In Time) also stars as Billy Owen.
MoviePass Films started production on Axis Sally this week in Puerto Rico with a $25 million budget. The studio recently finished Bruce Willis’ 10 Minutes Gone and is working on Neil Marshall’s horror movie The Reckoning next.
Pileggi is a prolific character actor, best known for playing Walter Skinner on The X-Files. He also played Ernest Darby on Sons of Anarchy from 2008 to 2013 and Harris Ryland on the Dallas reboot. In Grey’s Anatomy, he played Larry Jennings from 2007 to 2012.
Axis Sally is not the only Nazi-related project Pacino is working on. The legendary actor also signed on to The Hunt, an Amazon series about a group of Nazi hunters in 1977. Executive produced by Jordan Peele, the series was created by David Weil and Alfonso Gomez-Rejon was hired to direct the pilot. The rest of the cast includes Logan Lerman, Jerrika Hinton, Lena Olin, Carol Kane, Saul Rubinek, Tiffany Boone, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Greg Austin and Dylan Baker.
In The Hunt, a group of Nazi hunters living in 1977 New York City find out that hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living in the U.S. and trying to set up a Fourth Reich. The hunters, who all have unique pasts and backgrounds, will go on a bloody quest to make sure Nazis never take power again.
Pacino recently played Joe Paterno in HBO’s Paterno and stars as Marcin Schwarz in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Pacino is an eight-time Oscar-nominee and won for Scent of a Woman in 1992. He won Emmys for Angels in America (2003) and You Don’t Know Jack (2010).
Photo credit: FOX via Getty Images
