Call Sheet: Kevin Bacon, Amanda Seyfield, Nicolas Cage, Elizabeth Banks, Emma Stone, Mark Wahlberg and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Call Sheet: Kevin Bacon, Amanda Seyfield, Nicolas Cage, Elizabeth Banks, Emma Stone, Mark Wahlberg and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Jul 18

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

X-Men: First Class continues to throw names all over the place with regards to casting, but only now do I recognize one of the stars: Kevin Bacon. Variety reports Bacon will play a lead villain while 20th Century Fox have also signed Jennifer Lawrence to play Mystique. The director of Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn, is behind this new X-Men flick.

Deadline reckons Mark Ruffalo is in ‘late-stage talks’ to play The Hulk in the new Avengers movie after Marvel publicly announced Edward Norton can go get fucked, basically.

The Wrap reveals Zombieland co-stars Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone are joining an already well-established cast on the film Friends With Benefits. Being directed by Will Gluck, Friends With Benefits stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis as two friends who have recently emerged from disastrous relationships. Patricia Clarkson, Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman and Andy Samberg have also signed on. That’s a very intriguing cast, to say the least. Justin Timberlake again? Doesn’t he spend his time writing songs?

Riskybusiness reports that Chris Pratt and Kathryn Morris will join Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill, and Robin Wright on Bennett Miller’s highly anticipated Moneyball, which starts shooting next month.

THR reveals that that kid from The Sixth Sense, Haley Joel Osment, is all grown up and about to play a virgin who teaches sex education at a school in the film Sex Ed. A synopsis so awesome it has every spec screenwriter kicking themselves for not writing this first.

Planet Of The Apes prequel Rise Of The Apes had Brian Cox and Tom Felton join the cast over the week. They’ll accompany James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, and Andy Serkis, who all signed on recently.

Director Steven Soderbergh has added John Hawkes to his film Contagion which has an impressive ensemble cast that includes Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. Give this casting director a gold star!

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has joined the cast of this fifth Fast And The Furious. It’s called Fast Five. That is all.

There are few directors that perk my interest when it comes to fantasy and science fiction films (just not my bag, baby), but when I hear that Andrew Niccol is making a new flick, I pay attention. After Gattaca, The Truman Show, S1m0ne & Lord Of War, Niccol will next helm the film I’M.MORTAL and has signed one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood right now (literally and figuratively) Miss Amanda Seyfried. (Variety)

Remember that short film The Raven which created a stir online back in April? Latino Review reports the feature film adaptation has been picked up by Universal and Mark Wahlberg is set to star and produce. It was sounding good up until that ‘Mark Wahlberg’ part, huh.

Deadline revealed that Amy Adams will play Janis Joplin in the bio film about her rock n’ roll life. The film is being produced by Wyck Godfrey who is also behind The Twilight Saga. I’ll leave you with that thought.

Cigarettes and Red Vines got the scoop that Paul Thomas Anderson‘s next film The Master, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jeremy Renner, will start production in August 2010. This is awesome because it’s PTA and PSH joining forces again. This makes me happy.

What does not make me happy is Nicolas Cage confirming on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson that he’ll reprise his role Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider 2. Did you go see the first one? Did you rent it? Someone saw it enough times to afford them a sequel.

Last but not least, Elizabeth Banks will play Tinkerbell in a live action adaptation for Disney called Tink. I’m in favour of this. Here’s why:

THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA will be post-converted into 3D: set phasers to “rage”

THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA will be post-converted into 3D: set phasers to “rage”

Jul 15

This comes straight from the bad news department: Marvel Studios is planning on converting two of its biggest 2011 films into 3D in post-production, Thor and Captain America (annoyingly subtitled The First Avenger). This bodes ill for people who don’t like 3D, people who specifically didn’t like the 3D in Alice In Wonderland or Clash Of The Titans, and people who are obsessed with continuity, who will inevitably bemoan the sudden addition of an extra dimension halfway through the Avengers intro film series (The Incredible Hulk and the Iron Man films were in regular-D, remember?).

Kenneth Branagh — Kenneth fucking Branagh — is quoted as saying “We came to feel that in our case 3D could be the very good friend of story and character for a different kind of experience.” He’s in charge of Thor; what does Captain America director Joe Johnston have to say? He’s more pessimistic on the subject, but he does reckon “pictures that deserve to be in 3D will continue to be [in 3D].” (Go here for full quotes.)

I guess this means Joss Whedon’s Avengers movie will also be in 3D, in which case it already has two strikes against it in my mind.

Thor comes down from Valhalla on 6 May 2011 in the US; Captain America re-starts World War 2 on 22 July 2011; both in delicious / disgusting 3D (depending on your preferences).

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

Jul 12

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.

Two goofy movies get goofy new titles: FANTASTIC FOUR reboot and DIE HARD 5 renamed

Two goofy movies get goofy new titles: FANTASTIC FOUR reboot and DIE HARD 5 renamed

Jun 10

Once upon a time, the Fantastic Four films were rubbish. Then, at the same time Disney acquired Marvel, a Jessica Alba-less Fantastic Four reboot was announced, to the delight of comic book fans everywhere. Heroes / Smallville writer Michael Green was hired to write the script (he also wrote the upcoming Green Lantern adaptation); Hancock / I Am Legend producer Akiva Goldsman is on board as showrunner; beyond that no personnel have been attached to the project, no release date or even title announced.

Now, however, the Fantastic Four reboot has (apparently) been named: Fantastic Four Reborn. Great! Sounds like the eponymous four heroes are going to find themselves shoved back into the womb and sternly told to think about what they’ve done and try again (er, symbolically, of course).

And what about that Die Hard 5 thing that’s supposedly happening? Why, it’s been titled Die Hard 24/7, of course! What common numerical parlance will they pillage next? Perhaps we’ll see Die Hard 666 (where Kevin Smith turns out to be the devil) next, and then Die Hard 747 (on a plane, of course), followed by Die Hard 815: The Dharma Initiative, and then maybe Die Hard 911. Then there’ll be a four-dimensional reboot called Die Hard X: Yippee-Pi-Irrational Numbers, Motherfucker. At least, that’s how it’d play out if I ran Fox.

Anyway, these titles come from a top-secret super-spy mole infiltrating the evil 20th Century Fox corporation, so take them with a grain of salt.