Call Sheet: Edward Norton is out, X-Men: First Class gets busy, Denzel Washington, The Hobbit, Kevin Smith, Christoper Nolan and James Bond

Call Sheet: A weekly run-down of movie casting news and rumours from around the web.

• A pile of X-Men: First Class casting filtered down from above this week, it’s been hard to keep track of. Aaron Johnson (star of Kick-Ass and Nowhere Boy) was rumoured to have been cast as Cyclops, but his people were quick to put that rumour to rest. That is where my interest in this film ends. For your benefit, here is, officially, who is cast: James McAvoy will play the young Professor X. Michael Fassbender is Erik Lensherr, who becomes Magneto. Alice Eve plays Emma Frost. Nicholas Hoult has been cast as Hank McCoy (aka Beast). Caleb Landry Jones plays Banshee, and Lucas Till was cast as Havok. Phew!

• While we’re still on comic books, Marvel have finally confirmed Edward Norton won’t be playing Bruce Banner/The Hulk in the upcoming Avengers movie. They’re gonna cast someone who better suits the character. Even though they’re right, that’s a real low-blow, Marvel. Low. Blow.

• I feel a bit silly reporting bits on The Hobbit because the film is far from getting started after director Guillermo del Toro left. It’s been a horrible mess since the beginning. Now, just to add to the drama, Gandalf himself Sir Ian McKellan is getting a fed up and has announced he won’t be waiting around for the production to get under way. Can you blame him?

• Deadline has it on good authority that Oscar winner Denzel Washington will return to the role of playing lead antagonist in the upcoming film Safe House, being directed by Daniel Espinosa. Denzel will play a dangerous criminal being transported to a safety by a young CIA agent after both are attacked in a safe house.

• Variety reports Virginia Madsen has joined Amanda Seyfried, Max Irons, Shiloh Fernandez, Gary Oldman, Julie Christie and Lukas Haas on Red Riding Hood, an upcoming Catherine Hardwicke project that is said to be a ‘gothic horror reimagining’ of the classic Grimm Brothers tale. No kidding.

• While spending her 90 days in prison, Lindsay Lohan doesn’t have to worry about missing out on playing Deep Throat pornstar Linda Lovelace in the bio film Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story (gee, I hope that’s a working title…). LA Times caught up with the film’s director Matthew Wilder who says the project will wait for her to be released. I wish Matthew all the best in trying to direct Lindsay and get a suitable performance out of her.

• Robert Rodriguez talks a lot about projects that rarely come into fruition (much like his mate Quentin Tarantino, actually). He recently talked about Sin City 2 (again) which I’m still keen to see, and this perhaps this holds some water now that he finally made good on his promise of delivering Machete and producing Predators all in one year. Digital Spy got this reply when they asked about the much-anticipated sequel:

“We’re still working on Sin City, I want to do it so we’ll see. It’s just a matter of when… We have a script… a rewritten script that we still have to write and it’s just finding the right time slot to do it.”

• Collider took part in a round-table discussion with Kevin Smith where he revealed he isn’t looking for any A-listers to appear in his upcoming horror film Red State. I’ll let him try to explain himself:

“For the first time since Clerks I’m trying to go, not unknown, but actors who aren’t like, you’re gonna see them on screen and not know their name…it’s a weird kind of in between neither place that I’m reaching for. It’s not complete unknown and it’s not remotely fucking recognizable, name recognizable…It’s really tough to find actors whose name you don’t know. You know you can go to Law and Order and grab anybody from the cast and they’ve done five or six episodes and shit but you’d still recognize them and you’d be watching the movie and be like “that’s that dude, I’ve seen that dude on Law and Order!”

• James Bond and Christopher Nolan fans went collectively batshit-crazy when the director stated he would love to do a Bond film one day. Don’t hold your breath, though– that’s all there is to it: Nolan simply saying it’d be fun to do and he respects the Bond character. There’s no film, no deal, not much else to get excited about.

• Christopher Walken has joined Mickey Rourke, Javier Bardem and Jason Statham on Tony Scott’s Potsdamer Platz.

• We’ll finish with some pic of Mill Jovovich, hey? They’re not too racy– instead, they show off the exuberant costumes she’s wearing as Milady de Winter in Paul W.S. Anderson’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers. These (among others) were uploaded to her Twitter feed.

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