With Cannes starting up and the business of Hollywood going on as normal, there’s loads of casting news emerging, so here’s the latest…
While Hugh Jackman has been attached to Real Steel for quite a while now, with Shawn Levy (Night At the Museum) directing, the rest of the cast list has been slow to fill up. The movie is about a boxer who gets washed out of the sport after robots take over in the ring. He then starts to bond with his son when they work together on a broken, underdog bot that may have what it takes to be a champion. We also knew 11-year-old Dakota Goyo would play the son and it’ll be released on November 18th, 2011, but that was about it, However now Lost star Evangeline Lilly and The Hurt Locker’s Anthony Mackie have joined the cast, with the former as a friend of Jackman’s character and the latter a fellow boxing promoter. (Source: Variety)
An intriguing trio of actresses have joined the action comedy Wild Oats, with Shirley MacLaine, Maria Bello and Christina Ricci signing up, with male support coming from john Corbett and Bill Pullman. The film is about a retired history teahcer who mistakenly receives a massive welfare payment and becomes a fugitive when she takes her grand-daughter on a trip to Las Vegas. Scott Marshall is directing, with shooting scheduled to begin this August. (Source: Screen International)
While a movie called A Great Education might sound like a sequel to the recent An Education, it isn’t. Instead it’s Christopher Keyser’s planned film about a working class lad who enters Harvard College, where he joins the singing group the Krockodiloes, gets mixed up in the social whirl and falls for a society girl. It’s now been announced they’ve been busy casting the movie, with Emma Roberts playing the society girl, William Moseley the working class student, while Ben Kinglsey also has an unspecified role. It’s certainly good for Moseley, and should ensure he has a career past the first two Narnia movies. (Source: THR)
Jason O’Mara has joined the cast of One For The Money, the Katherine Heigl comedy, based on Janet Evanovich’s novels, about an unemployed lingerie buyer who becomes a bounty hunter to make ends meet. O’Mara will be the man Heigl is after on her first big case, a cop who is wanted for murder and also happens to be a former high school boyfriend. Daniel Sunjata will also be in the movie as a feared bounty hunter. (Source: Variety)
Willem Dafoe, Paz Vega, Oscar Isaac and Michelle Rodrxiguez are in talks to join the cast of Paul Schrader’s ensemble tale, The Jesuit. The film is about a man nicknamed ‘the jesuit’ who is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. However when his wife is murdered and his son kidnapped and taken to Mexico, he hatches a daring plan to escape, rescue his child and avenge his spouse’s killing. (Source: Variety)
The film world loves ghost stories and it looks like we’ve got another one incoming from British TV director turned feature film helmer Nick Murphy. It’s called The Awakening and follows a sceptical woman in the early 1920s who travels to a countryside boarding school to investigate rumours of an apparent haunting. Just when she thinks she has debunked the ghost theory, she has a chilling spectral encounter which defies all her rational beliefs. Rebecca Hall, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton have now joined the cast of the movie, which will begin filming in June. (Source: Screen International)
Toni Collette is reuniting with the man who helped give her her breakout role, director PJ Hogan. They’re teaming up for a film called Mental, which revolves around Collette’s character, a bizarre, eccentric woman who turns a family’s life upside down when she becomes the nanny for their five young children. The movie will shoot in Australia next January. (Source: Variety)
The Aziz Ansari and Danny McBride comedy 30 Minutes Or Less is due to start filming shortly and so they’re busy filling up the supporting roles. Michael Pena and Nick Swardson are reported to in talks to join the film, which revolves around a junior high history teacher (Ansari) and a pizza-delivery man who are forced to rob a bank (by men including McBride)when one of them is strapped to a bomb vest. Pena is slated to play a tatooed assassin, while Swardson will play McBride’s best friend. (Source: THR)