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Bryan Cranston to play blacklisted screenwriter in ‘Trumbo’

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On the heels of his soon-to-be-concluded run on “Breaking Bad,” Bryan Cranston plans to play blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in a drama about the Hollywood Ten scribe.

Trumbo, who died in 1976, was a novelist and screenwriter who refused to testify in the anti-Communist hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.

Convicted along with nine other Hollywood authors for contempt of Congress, a group that made up the Hollywood Ten, Trumbo served nearly a year in a federal penitentiary.

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He was blacklisted by the movie studios, although he did win an Academy Award for writing 1956’s “The Brave One” under the pseudonym Robert Rich.

In 1975, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized Trumbo as the film’s real writer. In 1993, 17 years after his death, Trumbo received the Academy Award for writing 1953’s “Roman Holiday”; the original screen credit went to Ian McLellan Hunter, who had been Trumbo’s front.

He was credited under his real name as the screenwriter of 1960’s “Exodus” and “Spartacus,” which effectively broke his blacklisting.

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The movie will be directed by Jay Roach (“Game Change,” “Recount”) from a script by John McNamara, who adapted Bruce Cook’s 1977 biography, “Dalton Trumbo.”

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Cranston played CIA agent Jack O’Donnell is last year’s Oscar-winning “Argo.” He has won three Emmy awards as lead actor in a drama series for “Breaking Bad” and could pick up a fourth in Sunday’s ceremony.

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