Here’s the latest casting news coming out of the film world…
Helena Bonham Carter and Freddie Highmore have signed up to star in Toast, a film adaptation of Nigel Slater’s memoir, in which the food writer reminisces about growing up in the Midlands in the 1960s. Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) is on scripting duties, apparently having to find ways to allow the movie to be set to the songs of Dusty Springfield. Highmore will play Slater as a 15-year-old, while Bonham-Carter will be his stepmother. SJ Clarkson is directing, with shooting set to begin in June. Bonham-Carter and Highmore previously played mother and son in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Source: Screen International)
Gary Oldman is lending his voice to a character in Kung Fu Panda 2, joining the stars of the first film, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Susting Hoffman, Seth Rogen and Lucy Liu. The story centres on Po the panda’s search for other pandas and his run-in with a group of bandits. Oldman voices a character named Peacock, who helps Po find the bandits but is more than he seems. Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom is due out next summer. (Source: THR)
Atonement actress Romola Garai is eyeing a role in Lone Scherfig’s One Day, alongside Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway. The film, from the director of An Education, focusses on two people (Sutrgess and Hathwaya) who meet at their graduation in 1988, and then reunite one day a year for the next 20 years, with the film charting the ups and downs of their lives. Garai would play the woman Sturgess marries then divorces during those two decades. Filming starts this summer. (Source: THR)
The cast of The Help is certainly filling up. The movie, about a woman interviewing African-American maids in the deep south in the 1960s, which causes a scandal when it’s discovered what’s been revealed (not least about race relations), already has Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Emma Stone and Octavia Spencer signed up, and is now in the process of adding Chris Lowell (Private Practice, Up In The Air) to the list. He’ll play the boyfriend of the woman (Emma Stone) who’s interviewing the maids. (Source: THR)