After reading with fellow Australian actor, Luke Evans last week, Joel Edgerton has been recently confirmed to play the character of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

The film based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald is under the direction of Baz Luhrmann, who claimed that the Animal Kingdom star is the perfect man for the role.

"In casting Tom one had to find an actor who could credibly be (as F. Scott Fitzgerald describes him) 'one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven', had five-star acting chops and in the big dramatic showdown scenes between Gatsby and Tom, hold the screen against Leonardo DiCaprio, in the appropriate age group," Luhrmann was quoted as telling Deadline.com, said the Sydney Morning Herald.

Edgerton who also starred in a short film, The Thief and other box office hit films such as the King Arthur, joins Leonardo DiCaprio who plays the lead role as jay Gatsby. Other casts hired for the film adaptation include Carey Mulligan set to play the character of Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan’s wife.

Also joining the film are Tobey Maguire, the film narrator, Nick Carraway whose love interest, Jordan Baker will be played by Elizabeth Debicki, an Australian new face.The Sydney Morning Herald noted that Luhrmann has already begun preproduction in Sydney.

Edgerton appeared in a number of short films including Spider, Crossbow, The Pitch, Gate, Bloodlock, among others. He has a number of projects for 2011: The Thing, Say Nothing and The Odd Life of Timothy Green. He had just completed two projects for the year including Warrior and The Cartographer.

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