Hollywood's little miss sunshines are growing up, and how (looking at you too, Dakota): Variety reports that 15-year-old Abigail Breslin has been cast as one of two leads in The Class Project, an indie drama based on the real-life "Bathtub Girls," two teenage Canadian sisters who murdered their mother in 2003 and got away with the crime for a year before being found out. Stan Brooks will direct from a script by Fabrizio Filippo and Adam Till who adapted The Class Project from Toronto Star reporter Bob Mitchell's 2008 book, The Class Project: How To Kill a Mother: The True Story of Canada's Infamous Bathtub Girls. [Variety]
When Channing Tatum takes Alex Pettyfer under his wing to teach him the ins and outs of male stripper life in Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, the young bucks will have another ex-stripper on hand with extensive shirtless experience: Matthew McConaughey. Best casting move in a while, Hollywood -- doubly so for you, Matty McC. Shall we study the history books to guess whether or not McConaughey will strip down himself as Dallas, "a former exotic dancer who now owns and operates Xquisite, the club where 'Magic Mike' works?" [Variety]
According to Variety, Brad Pitt is negotiating to play the title role in the assassin thriller The Gray Man, adapted by Adam Cozad from Mark Greaney's 2009 novel. The role would see Pitt as Court Gentry, an ex-CIA operative known for his lethal skill who goes on the run after his last job goes wrong, with action taking place across the globe. Could this be Hollywood's next Bourne-style property?
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Move over, Penn Badgley. The official biopic about late singer Jeff Buckley -- "official" because the untitled film is being executive produced by Buckley's mother Mary Guibert -- has found its young troubadour: Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark star and singer Reeve Carney. How come the relative newcomer wound up leading the highly anticipated biopic of the late singer?
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Rapper and singer and living Bratz doll Nicki Minaj -- she of the latest televised nipple slip, who is currently opening for Britney Spears on tour (I'd argue it should be the other way 'round) -- will make her feature film debut next summer alongside fellow rapper (and onetime Degrassi star, let's not forget) Drake. Which envelope-pushing production will Minaj lend her chameleonic talents to in her first major screen credit?
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Bruce Campbell is full of big announcements this summer. First, he confirmed that a remake of Evil Dead is officially in the works. (With Diablo Cody on board to help write the script no less.) And now, the actor has just tweeted that he will work with his long-time collaborator Sam Raimi once again in Oz: The Great and Powerful.
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Big news on the Gotti front of the non-legal variety: Fiore Films has just announced that Ben Foster has signed on to star in Barry Levinson's star-studded crime family biopic, Gotti: In The Shadow Of My Father as John Gotti Jr. opposite John Travolta and Al Pacino. The project will be a reunion for Levinson and Foster, who worked together on the 1999 period drama Liberty Heights.
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Apparently when you form a family from spare cast members of Glee, the Twilight franchise, and Law and Order: SVU, you might end up with an attractive ensemble. We watch such results occur in this on-set picture from White Frog, next year's movie about "a 15-year-old with Asperger's (The Twilight Saga's Boo Boo Stewart) dealing with a tragedy in the family." Harry Shum of Glee and B.D. Wong of Law and Order: SVU (and the fabulous, Tony-award winning play M. Butterfly) flank him. Don't forget Joan Chen as the also-very-great-looking mom!
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Stomp the Yard fans, please assemble yourselves and field this life-affirming announcement: Chris Brown, who was good in Stomp the Yard (Jen Yamato assures me), is reportedly starring in a romantic-comedic adaptation of Steve Harvey's bestselling advice manual Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Is this exciting? Problematic? Should we try and sink him with Rihanna's aircraft carrier from Battleship? More details follow.
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It wouldn't be a Quentin Tarantino film without some kind of reclamation project (see: John Travolta, Robert Forster, Pam Grier, David Carradine, Michael Parks), and so Django Unchained finally feels complete. Deadline reports that Kevin Costner is in talks to play the villainous sidekick of Leonardo DiCaprio in QT's latest genre potboiler, a role that goes wildly against Costner's all-American wolf-dancing '90s-era type.
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Paul actor/screenwriter Nick Frost is reportedly in negotiations for the seventh and final dwarf role in Universal's Snow White and the Huntsman. The English actor would join leads Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron -- and fellow dwarf castees Toby Jones, Bob Hoskins, Eddie Marsan, Stephen Graham, Ray Winstone and Ian McShane. Eddie Izzard was in talks for a dwarf role as well, but it appears he may have fallen out in favor of Frost. [Variety]
Judd Apatow's next film -- his untitled writing/directing venture already starring Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Albert Brooks, and Megan Fox -- just added its first dose of Bridesmaids lady magic to the cast in the form of Melissa McCarthy. (Chris O'Dowd was previously mentioned as in negotiations for a role.) Awesome! But: Is McCarthy the bawdy bridesmaid whose success you should be rooting for most?
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