Here’s a round-up of the latest casting news coming out of Hollywood…
Although it appears it’s more a studio casting wishlist than an announcement that they’re actually going to do it, Fox is developing an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night, and has offered the main roles to Matt Damon and Keira Knightley. The book is about the psychological disintegration of a young married American couple on the French Riviera in the 1920s. Damon would play Dick, a promising young doctor and husband to Nicole (Knightley), whose wealth puts him in a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dicks traumatic demise. There’s no news on what either actor thinks of the offer, but they’d certainly be good choices for the film. (Source: Pajiba)
Daniel Dae Kim, star of TV’s soon-to-finish Lost, has booked a role in Deathgames, which was recently announced with Kellan Lutz and Samuel L. Jackson set to star. The story centers on a young man (Lutz) who is kidnapped by a sadistic mastermind (Jackson) and forced into a modern gladiator arena, where men fight to the death for the entertainment of the online masses. Kim is set to play a fellow prisoner, an artist who happens to be a master of kendo (samurai-style sword fighting), a skill that comes in handy when he competes for his life and his wife’s. Jonah Loop will make his directorial debut on the film, which is due to start shooting next month. (Source: THR)
A couple of days ago it was announced that Zooey Deschanel was set to play 19th Century tech heroine (and Lord Bryron’s daughter) Ada Lovelace, in a biopic called The Enchantress Of Numbers. Lovelace is renowned as a free-thinking women in a male dominated age, who is now seen as a pioneer who wrote what was essentially the first computer programme. Now Production Weekly has tweeted that ‘Billy Crudup & Toby Jones also attached to the period drama Enchantress Of Numbers, written by Shanee Edwards’. There’s no official news on what roles they might play, but it would seem Jones is in line to be Charles Babbage, the man who invented the machine Lovelace wrote her programme for, while Crudup would play her husband, William King. (Source: Twitter)
Production Weekly has been on a major role in the last couple of weeks, tweeting out loads of casting announcement ahead of anyone else. Now they’ve scored another one, saying ‘Marisa Tomei in talks to join the cast of The Lincoln Lawyer, playing Matthew McConaughey’s ex-wife, prosecuting attorney Maggie McPherson’. The thriller, based on the bestselling novel by Michael Connelly, is about Mickey Haller, a wheeler-dealer Los Angeles lawyer who operates out of the back of his Lincoln car. Haller is content with a career defending garden-variety criminals until he lands the case of a lifetime – defending a Beverly Hills playboy accused of murder. However the case turns out to be a lot more difficult than he initially suspected. (Source; Twitter)
Flight Of The Conchords star Rhys Darby has bagged himself the lead role in the upcoming rom-com, Love Birds. The movie, which is currently filming in Auckland, features Darby as a man who’s nursing a wild bird back to health after his girlfriend dumps him. Then he meets a kooky vet, played by Golden Globe winner Sally Hawkins. Paul Murphy is directing and while it sounds like a pretty standard rom-com venture, hopefully the pairing of Hawkins and Darby can provide some spark. (Source: Deadline)