Photographs have emerged of Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey sporting a prosthetic bald patch, ill-fitting suit and impressive paunch on the set of his new film, Gold.
The Texan actor – who is no stranger to body transformation in the name of art, having shed pounds to play a rodeo cowboy with Aids in Dallas Buyers Club (2013) and bulked up to play a muscle-bound stripper in Magic Mike (2012) – will portray unlucky modern-day prospector Kenny Wells in the mining drama. It marks the first new film from Syriana director Stephen Gaghan in a decade.
The film centres on the 1993 scandal in which Canadian mining company Bre-X Minerals Ltd falsely reported the discovery of a huge gold deposit at its site in Busang, Indonesia. The company later declared bankruptcy following what has been described as one of the most elaborate frauds in the history of mining.
McConaughey stars opposite Bryce Dallas Howard as his long-term girlfriend and Édgar Ramírez as geologist Michael Acosta. The film has reportedly been shot in Thailand and New York.
Gold is being pitched as a tale of greed and folie de grandeur in the vein of John Huston’s 1948 western The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which starred Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt and Huston’s father, Walter, as penniless prospectors who become corrupted after discovering vast riches in 1920s Mexico.
