'Magnificent Seven' Remake Casts Brazilian Star Wagner Moura (Exclusive)

Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke star in the Western based on the 1960 film of the same name.

Brazilian star Wagner Moura has landed a role in MGM's remake of The Magnificent Seven.

Antoine Fuqua directs the film, which is based on the 1960 film of the same name. Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Haley Bennett, who appeared with Washington in Fuqua’s thriller The Equalizer, have already boarded the project.

In a nod to the growing importance of the international box office, Moura's casting helps MGM ensure a strong audience presence in South America, where the actor has a sizable fan base. Moura will play Vasquez, one of the titular Magnificent Seven.

Written by John Lee Hancock and Nic Pizzolatto, the story kicks off when a woman (Bennett) hires a disparate group of gunslingers to protect her town from rampaging bandits. The 1960 film, which itself was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Japanese-language film Seven Samurai, starred Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and Robert Vaughn.

Roger Birnbaum and Todd Black are producing the new version, with Walter Mirisch and Fuqua executive producing.

Moura is a Brazilian film, TV and stage actor who is best known to international audiences as the star of Elite Squad and its sequel, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within. He made the leap to high-profile Hollywood films playing Spider in Sony's 2013 sci-fi film Elysium.

Moura will next be seen as notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series Narcos.

He is repped by UTA, Timaeus Group and Bloom Hergott.