Here’s the latest smaller news coming out of Hollywood…
Madonna is busy putting together her next effort as a director (her first was the little seen Filth and Wisdom), about the love affair between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, which threw Britain into a constitutional crisis when the new king announced he was going to abdicate so that he could marry the woman he loved, something that wouldn’t have been possible at the time, due to the fact she was a divorcee. It’s previously been announced that Vera Farmiga is attached to the Wallis Simpson role in W.E., and now it’s being reported that Ewan McGregor will take on Edward VIII. Apparently the film will be a bit Julie & Julia, with one half looking at the 1930s drama, while in the other, Abbie Cornish will play a modern woman who’s obsessed with Wallis Simpson and has romantic problems of her own. (Source: Screen Daily)
Dorian Gray and Vicky Cristina Barcelona star, Rebecca Hall, has signed up to appear opposite Will Ferrell in Everything Must Go. Written and directed by Dan Rush (and based on Raymond Carver’s short story) the film centres on a relapsed alcoholic (Ferrell), who loses his job and his wife, and decides to live on his front lawn while selling all his belongings. Hall will play a woman who’s new to the neighbourhood and forms a bond with Ferrell’s character. (Source: Variety)
Jessica Chastain has signed up to star opposite Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in The Fields. Although she’s not well known now, Chastain is likely to become a lot more famous thanks to the fact she’s playing Brad Pitt’s wife in Terrence Malick’s upcoming Tree Of Life, as well as taking a role in Ralphi Fiennes’ Coriolanus. In the Fields, a homicide detective (Worthington) fights two sets of fierce killers to save the life of a street kid named Little Anne. Chastain plays Worthington’s ex-wife, a former rodeo queen who likewise is a homicide detective and also determined to the find the killers, with or without his help. (Source: THR)
The English-language voice cast of the 3D CG Moomins movie, Moomins and the Comet Chase, is shaping up to be suitably nordic, with father and son Stellan and Alexander Skarsgard signed up, along with Peter Stormare, all of whom are Swedish. The film is set to be the first 3D CG movie produced in Scandinavia. (Source: Variety)
Bold Films, the producers of Legion, has acquired Blank Slate, an action thriller spec script from Doug Cook and David Weisberg, the writing team behind The Rock and Double Jeopardy. The movie is described as a female-oriented take on The Bourne Identity, where, in order to investigate the murder of a female CIA agent, her memories are implanted into the damaged brain of a female convict. The agent’s lethal abilities also are implanted, and soon the convict goes rogue to discover the truth about the killing. (Source: THR)