Steve Zahn has always struck me as an actor who ought to be a lot more famous than he is. He’s incredibly talented but always seems to pick so-so movies that fail to launch him into the a-list, such as Happy Texas, National Security and Daddy Day Care. While it’s unlikely to help his rise to the top, Zahn has now signed up for the movie Diary Of A Wimpy kid, based on Jeff Kinney’s series of children’s books, which have sold more than 20 million copies.
The novels follow a kid through a year of middle-school, charting the ups and downs of his life. Thor Freudenthal (Hotel For Dogs) is set to direct the movie, with Zachary Gordon playing the title role. Zahn will be the kid’s father.
In other casting news, Watchmen’s Silk Spectre I, Carla Gugino, will be working with director Zach Snyder again on his upcoming movie, Sucker Punch. She’ll be joining Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish in the film, which is about a girl (Emily Browning), who gets admitted to an insane asylum and then retreats into an alternate reality as a coping strategy (think Alice In Wonderland with machine guns). Gugino will play a nurse who becomes the madam of a brothel in the alternate reality.