This should be interesting (or completely familiar, depending on how they play it): According to Deadline, Vince Vaughn is set to star in a feature adaptation of The Rockford Files, the '70s-era detective series that starred James Garner as a disheveled Los Angeles private eye. The involvement of scripting duo David Levien and Brian Koppelman (Rounders, Ocean's Thirteen, Solitary Man) is somewhat promising, though Vaughn hasn't shown any desire to move away from his tired Vince Vaughn shtick of late -- and do audiences really want a Vince Vaughn-ified Jim Rockford? Besides, if Steve Carell and David Shore couldn't make a Rockford reboot work, how will Vaughn & Co. fare? [Deadline]
This just in from Variety: "Ben Kingsley is in final talks to play the villain in Iron Man 3, but fans of the comic book character will be disappointed to learn he won’t take on original Tony Stark archenemy the Mandarin." Well, good. I for one am glad that Ben Kingsley will not be playing a Chinese guy. Instead, the Oscar-winning actor will reportedly play a baddie "involved in the spread of a virus through nanobots."
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Deadline reports that Paula Patton is in talks to star with Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg in 2 Guns, a crime pic directed by Contraband's Baltasar Kormakur based on the graphic novel by Stephen Grant "about a DEA agent and an undercover naval intelligence officer who unwittingly investigate each other as each steals mob money." Patton will play Washington's love interest, though I feel like they've already been here before... or maybe I just have DEJA VU. HONK! Yeeeeah. Sigh. [Deadline]
Crazy Heart writer-director Scott Cooper isn't holding back with the follow-up to his double-Oscar-winning filmmaking debut, dialing in Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard and Zoe Saldana (not to mention producers including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ridley Scott and Relativity Media mogul Ryan Kavanaugh) for the family crime-and-redemption drama Out of the Furnace. Read on for full details just over the transom from Relativity; adjust your Oscar 2013 pools accordingly.
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Besides William Forsythe, that is: "Director Martin Guigui is currently scouting for: YOUNG JAKE LAMOTTA. To play 14-20 years old, and already a tough bare knuckles fighter. He takes his father’s frequent beatings without a sound and makes money fighting much bigger opponents in back alley fights set up by his drunken, abusive father. Please submit over 18 to play younger OR emancipated. GUISSEPE [sic] LAMOTTA. Portrays 40s-70s, Jake’s father, a tough-looking Italian man, he’s a mean drunk who handcuffs and beats his son. He sets up the back alley fights with Jake and much older, stronger opponents. Later he refuses to help the grown-up Jake when he asks for money. Late in life, a frail old man, he reconciles with Jake just before his death. STAR NAME ONLY." Good luck, Mickey Rourke! [Moviehole via The Playlist]
Ever since growling his way through 2008's gloriously B-movie-esque B-movie Taken, Liam Neeson's been enjoying his newfound status as the gruff hero with killer instincts and a particular set of skills that you want on your side in the event of a kidnapping/assassination attempt/jailbreak/wolf attack. So why fix something that ain't broke? Enter Non-Stop, Neeson's next actioner and an airplane-set excuse to see Neeson smash heads and deliver straightfaced epic one-liners.
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"The King of Twitter is now the King of Apple, as Two and a Half Men star Ashton Kutcher is attached to play Steve Jobs in the indie pic Jobs, which Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote) will direct from a script by Matt Whiteley. The film will chronicle Steve Jobs from wayward hippie to co-founder of Apple, where he became one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of our time." Not to be confused with the other movie about Steve Jobs, which is no doubt courting Jim Parsons as we speak. [Variety]
Back in January, MGM/Screen Gems tapped director Kimberly Peirce to helm their remake of Stephen King's Carrie, updating the supernatural tale after Brian de Palma's iconic 1976 film adaptation. The current frontrunners to play Carrie White, the sexually repressed telekinetic teen who wreaks bloody revenge on her classmates at the high school prom? Kick-Ass star Chloe Moretz and actress Haley Bennett (The Haunting of Molly Hartley, Marley & Me), according to Vulture. Can either fill Sissy Spacek's shoes?
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Because the only thing audiences want to see more than Woody Allen acting in someone else's movie is Woody Allen whoring John Turturro out to rich women, we will soon have a film entitled Fading Gigolo (which still sounds better than Nero Fiddled). Turturro will write and direct the buddy comedy, "which finds Turturro and Allen playing cash-strapped best friends who decide to go into the gigolo business together and subsequently attract the suspicion of the Hasidic Jewish community in which they live. Duo take on the pseudonyms Virgil and Bongo, with Allen pimping out Turturro's character until he falls for a Jewish widow, who has not yet been cast." [Variety]
This just in: The makers of the forthcoming CW spin-off series The Carrie Diaries (a prequel to Candace Bushnell's franchise-launching Sex and the City novel) have found their new Carrie Bradshaw in Soul Surfer/Race to Witch Mountain/Bridge to Terabithia star AnnaSophia Robb. The series "chronicles Carrie’s coming of age in the 1980s when she asks her first questions about love, sex, friendship and family while exploring the worlds of high school and Manhattan." So it's basically Gossip Girl with a Carrie Bradshaw who looks nothing like the future Carrie Bradshaw. Oh, fine. Why not? [Deadline]
After spending the last year with her Oscar and her new baby, Natalie Portman is set to return to acting with a busy year with not one, but two Terrence Malick films. The Black Swan star will join Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett to film Knight of Cups this summer, with all three reuniting in the fall to film Malick's Lawless with Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, and Haley Bennett. Plot details for both films have been kept under wraps, so tee off with your thoughts on the Portman addition and the unusual double film casting move below. [Deadline]
Taylor Swift may have been offered a role in Tom Hooper's Les Miserables film, but has she recently been replaced? According to Broadway World, theater impresario Cameron Mackintosh, who is also producing Hooper's film, announced onstage at a curtain call for Oliver! that stage actress Samantha Barks has been chosen to play Eponine -- the role he cast her in for the 2010 25th anniversary Les Mis concert. Les Mis purists, you may exhale in 3, 2, 1...
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If you were put off by the thought of Demi Moore playing feminist icon Gloria Steinem in the currently-filming porn biopic Lovelace, you have the whip-its to thank for this casting change: Sarah Jessica Parker will now step into Steinem's shoes opposite Amanda Seyfried's titular Linda Lovelace as Moore recovers and, as a press release delicately puts it, "seek[s] treatment for exhaustion." Just a few more day-playing A-listers and Lovelace will officially turn into New Year's Eve. [Deadline]
James Franco. Hank Azaria. David Cross. Ron Livingston. It's a broad range of actors who've been enlisted previously to play Beat icon Allen Ginsberg, none of them quite delivering the poet's intellect and spirit opposite the, er, best minds of his generation. Now comes the news that Daniel Radcliffe will take a shot of his own at Ginsberg in director John Krokidas's Kill Your Darlings.
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Last week came news that perennial problem starlet Lindsay Lohan was in talks to play screen icon Elizabeth Taylor in Lifetime's Liz and Dick biopic, which would mark some sort of career rejuvenation for the troubled La Lohan. But wait! It seems other actresses are also up for the role, including Transformers/Passion Play star Megan Fox.
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