Jude Law Confirms He's Playing Vladimir Putin in a New Movie: 'How Am I Going to Do This?'

Jude Law has a big challenge ahead for his newest role.

In an interview with Deadline published Thursday, Jan. 9, the 52-year-old actor revealed that he will play Russian President Vladimir Putin in an upcoming film titled The Wizard of the Kremlin.

Directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, the movie will involve Law in a supporting role and follow Putin, now 72, "at the beginning of his governing career," per the outlet.

"I haven’t really started work on it yet," Law told Deadline before clarifying, "I mean, I have, but at the moment it looks like an Everest to climb, so I’m in the foothills looking up thinking, ’Oh Christ, what have I said?’ "

"That’s often how I feel whilst I say yes," he added. "I was going, ’Oh God, how am I going to do this?’ But anyway, that’s for me to sort out.”

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The Wizard of the Kremlin will also star Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander and Zach Galifianakis, according toVariety, which reported on the film in May 2024.

It will be based on Giuliano da Empoli's 2023 bestselling book of the same name, with a screenplay by Assayas, 69, and Emmanuel Carrère, the outlet reported.

Dano, 40, will reportedly play protagonist Vadim Baranov, an artist-turned-TV-producer who "blurs truth with lies, the news with propaganda, directing the entire society like one great reality show," while "working at the heart of Russian power."

"Only his love for the magnetic, free-minded Ksenia can turn him away from this dangerous game,” adds the synopsis from Variety.

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Law most recently appeared the 2024 action-thriller film The Order, and can be seen on the new series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew airing on Disney+.

The two-time Oscar nominee received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December 2024, where he told PEOPLE his mother Margaret, who died recently, was on his mind.

"I found out and was originally going to have the [ceremony] a couple of weeks back," Law said of the moment he found out he'd receive a star on the iconic Los Angeles street. "And actually, I lost my mom. So we had to delay it. But in a very odd way as a kind of final gift, it meant that a few more of my family could actually be here."

The actor was accompanied at the ceremony last month by his wife Phillipa Coan and his two eldest children: Rafferty, 28, and Iris, 24. (Law is also dad to son Rudy, 22, and daughters Sophia, 15, and Ada, 9, as well as two younger children with Coan.)

"Honestly, the whole event has been quite an emotional experience, and obviously just a very personal occasion and really touching," he added of the ceremony.

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