Irish Eye on Hollywood: John Cusack Scouts the North for Thomas Francis Meagher Film

Irish American John Cusack recently went on a secret movie mission to Belfast. Chicago native Cusack (Say Anything, Being John Malkovich, Hot Tub Time Machine) was ostensibly in the North to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Belfast Film Festival. But as the Belfast Telegraph put it: “The A-lister, who is also a producer and screenwriter, used the trip to scout out a new film about revolutionary Thomas F. Meagher – the man who gave us the Irish tricolor.”

It turns out Cusack was traveling with Irish producer Kevin McCabe. The film – still at the earliest stages of production – is based on The Immortal Irishman, a biography of Meagher by Irish American New York Times columnist Timothy Egan.

Meagher was born in Waterford in 1823 and died in the U.S. under mysterious circumstances in 1867, after living a life of rebellion, exile, and war, from Tasmania to the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War. ♦