Here’s today’s smaller stories coming out of Hollywood…
Last month is was announced Hugh Laurie was planning star in the long-gestating indie comedy Oranges, about a middle-aged man’s romantic relationship with the daughter of a family friend, which turns their lives upside-down. Now it’s been revealed who Hugh will be dating – Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester. That should certainly set up a decent May-December dynamic, as she’s 23 and he’s 50. Apparently Catherine Keener will also be in the movie, although there’s no news on what role she’ll be playing. Julian Farino will direct, with shooting expected to start in April. (Source: Variety)
Billy Burke, who’s recently been seen playing Bella’s father in the Twilight movies, has signed up to star in Drive Angry, alongside Nic Cage, William Fichtner, Charlotte Ross and Amber Heard. The Patrick Lussier directed film is about a man who is driven by rage and hellbent on finding the people who killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby. However the on-the-road pursuit spins out of control and gets increasingly bloody, leaving bodies strewn along the highway. Burke will play a charismatic cult leader whose nefarious influence leads to kidnapping and murder. Filming starts next month. (Source: Variety)
Norwegian directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning (Max Manus) are planning a movie about Thor Hyerdahl’s legendary Kon-Tiki expedition, where he travelled 4,300 miles from South America to the Tuamotu islands on a primitve raft, in order to prove it was possible for ancient peoples to have done it. No cast for the film has yet been announced, but filming is planned for June, with the movie hitting cinemas during Autumn 2011. (Source: Variety)
With the Farrelly Brother’s Hall Pass starting to shoot this week, the cast list is filling up fast. We already know about Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fisher, Amanda Bynes, Stephen Merchant, J.B Smoove, Nicky Whelan and Derek Waters and now Christina Applegate, Alyssa Milano, Larry Campbell and Vanessa Angel have also joined the movie. The film centers on what happens when two husbands are given permission to go outside their marriages for guilt-free romantic liaisons for one week. There’s no news though on what roles the new actors will be playing. (Source: THR)
Gregory Allen Howard, who wrote the sporting dramas Remember The Titans and Alie, has been hired to write a biopic of American footballer, Marlin ‘the Magician’ Briscoe. With the success of The Blind Side, I think we’re in for a rash of insipirational true-life football flicks, and this one will follow the generic path of Briscoe’s rise to the top, descent into addiction (which left him homeless and behind bars) and his eventual redemption. (Source: Variety)
Before he went on to Where The Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze was working on an adaptation of the 1955 children’s book, Harold and The Purple Crayon, but that film fell apart just two weeks before principal photography was set to begin. However it seem that despite Jonze’s departure, the film isn’t completely dead, as Date Night and Shrek The Third writer, Josh Klausner, has been hired to pen a script based on the book for Sony Pictures Amination. Harold and the Purple Crayon tells the story of a curious four-year-old boy who draws his reality and lives in the imaginary world he creates. Maurice Sendak will produce, with the tone said to be similar to The Neverending Story. (Source: Pajiba)
Disney has hired writers David Posamentier and Geoffe Moore to script Grandma’s Intergalactic Bed and Breakfast, based on Clete Barrett Smith’s book series, the first of which is due to be published in the US in May. The novel follows a boy who spends his summers at his grandmother’s B&B, which he discovers caters to aliens vacationing on Earth. If nothing else, it’s got a fantastic title. It’s also been announce Posamentier and Moore plan to make their directorial debut with Better Living Through Chemistry, about a meek small-town pharmacist, stuck in a loveless marriage, who rediscovers himself through an affair with a trophy wife who introduces him to the wonderful world of prescription drugs. When they begin to plot her husband’s murder, everything begins to fall apart. (Source: THR)
Dean Parisot has signed up to direct the Ed Helms comedy Central Intelligence, about an accountant who reconnects with an old friend via Facebook, but soon finds himself plunged into a world of international espionage. The film will be the Galaxy Quest director’s first movie since 2005’s Fun With Dick And Jane. (Source: Variety)
Lucy Liu and Bree Larson have joined Michael C. Hall in the indie comedy, East Fifth Bliss. The film will follow Hall as a mid-30s man, who starts a relationship with Larson’s 18-year-old character, which unsurprisingly causes his life to start unravelling. Liu will play his unhappily married neighbour. Michael Knowles will directing, with shooting due to begin in April. (Source: Variety)