Four Score and 465 Days to Go!

Steven Spielberg is a busy, busy man; this year alone he has over-seen production on Super 8, the third in the Transformers series (Dark of the Moon), the currently-filming Men in Black III, Sci-Fi TV series Terra Nova as well as wrapping directorial duties on The Adventures of Tin Tin and his live-action WW1 drama, War Horse . Despite the workload, he’s still managed to find time to cast his decade-in-the-making civil war (non-vampire related) biopic, Lincoln.

Joining Daniel Day-Lewis as the top-hat donning, abolitionist President (after replacing original attachment Liam Neeson), news just announced that Goodnight and Good Luck star David Strathairn will play Secretary of State, William H. Seward.

Famous for his role in the US purchase of Alaska from the Russians in 1867 (prompting the Russians to be thankful they weren’t the forefathers of Sarah Palin), Seward was also the victim of an assassination attempt by Lewis Powell, an associate of John Wilkes Booth, on the very same night Abraham Lincoln was murdered. Sustaining stab wounds to the face and neck, Seward was lucky to escape with his life.

This would not be the first time Strathairn has played someone associated with the Lincoln assassination, playing Edwin Booth, the brother of actor turned assassin John Wilkes in a stage production of Booth! A House Divided.

Along with Day-Lewis and Strathairn – Lincoln boasts a waistcoat brimming with gold including other hyphenated thesps Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tim Blake-Nelson, Tommy Lee Jones as well as Hal Holbrook, Sally Field and James Spader.

Look for a December, 2012 release at this stage – just enough time to let Spielberg finish his 50 other projects.

In the meantime, here’s the first-look at War Horse: