The Holdovers Writer Has ‘Written a Part’ for Paul Giamatti in Alexander Payne’s Western

Though he hasn’t been confirmed to be part of the movie, a role has apparently been written for Paul Giamatti in Alexander Payne‘s upcoming Western.

The Holdovers writer David Hemingson said at a Q&A of the holiday movie that a part has been written with Giamatti in mind in Payne’s forthcoming Western movie and that he’s hopeful the actor will partake.

“I’ve been sworn to secrecy,” Hemingson stated (via Deadline). “But what I will say is we’ve written him a part and I hope he’ll do it.”

Additionally, the screenwriter revealed some details about the setting of the Western, including the state and time it will take place in.

“Alexander and I are writing a Western together, so we’re going to co-write something, and it’s set in Nebraska in 1886, and it’s like no Western you have ever seen before, because it’s an Alexander Payne Western,” he explained. “So, all those interpersonal dynamics, all the stuff that he does, so brilliantly. He’s such a brilliant humanist. He’s going to suffuse this thing. It’ll be recognizable as within the genre, and it’ll have certain other tropes. But we intend to turn them on their head and really talk about the humanist perspective of 1886 Nebraska, which I’m thrilled about.”

What was The Holdovers about?

“It follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go,” reads the movie’s synopsis. “Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker (Dominic Sessa) — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).”