Key Casting Announced for NGC’s Killing Lincoln

WASHINGTON: Billy Campbell, who most recently appeared in AMC’s The Killing, has been cast as Abraham Lincoln in National Geographic Channel’s upcoming two-hour film Killing Lincoln from Scott Free Productions.

The TV movie, based on the book Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, is set to air on NGC globally in early 2013. The cast also features Jesse Johnson as John Wilkes Booth, Geraldine Hughes as Mary Todd Lincoln, Graham Beckel as Edwin Stanton, who served as secretary of war under the Lincoln administration, and Shawn Pyfrom as Private John W. Nichols.

The film is being directed by Adrian Moat (Gettysburg), with a script from Erik Jendresen (Band of Brothers). Production began this week in Virginia. "When we started to consider locations for where we would film Killing Lincoln, we felt it was important to look first in the very places where a good portion of our story took place, and that was Virginia," Moat said. "Once we scouted the rich historical locations of Richmond and Petersburg, that was it—we never considered anywhere else. I have fallen in love with this area and its people. I hope that when the audience watches the film, they will be thrilled and enlightened by the story behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but I also hope they will be intrigued about the locations and the history that we have found, and motivated to visit Virginia to experience these places for themselves."