Here’s the latest casting news coming out of Hollywood…
Ray Liotta has scored himself a role in Things Fall Apart, alongside rapper turned actor, 50 Cent, with Mario Van Peebles directing. The rapper also co-write the script (alongside Brian Miller), which will feature him as a star football running back who faces a personal tragedy as well as his own mortality, during his final year in college. Liotta will play a doctor who gets involved with treating 50 Cent’s character. (Source: Variety)
While Transamerica seemed to promise big things from Kevin Zegers, he’s yet to really capitalise on that. However he’s now lined up roles in two new movies – A Great Education and Entitled. While a couple of weeks ago it was reported Narnia star William Moseley would have the main role of 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 (Emma Roberts), it appears it’s Zegers who will have the main role, while Moseley will play another character. Ben Kingsley will also star, with Christopher Keyser directing. The other movie Zegers has up his sleeve is Entitled, which will see him as the ringleader of a ransom plot, which he’s hatched along with several other college students. Ray Liotta will once again co-star, while Aaron Woodley will direct. (Source: Variety)
In a day where all casting news has to be linked together (Zegers gets two movies, as does Ray Liotta, etc.), comes reports that Mario Van Peebles who, as we said above, is directing 50 Cent’s Things Fall Apart, is also planning to star in The Exodus Of Charlie Wright, which will be written and directed by R. Ellis Frazier. Andy Garcia, Luke Goss and Aidan Quinn are also slated to star in the movie, which centres on Charlie (Quinn), a Los Angeles billionaire who goes into self-imposed exile in Tijuana after his empire is revealed to have been a Ponzi scheme. While looking for the woman he abandoned there 25 years before, Charlie is pursued by a Mexican gangster (Garcia), a federal agent (Van Peebles) and thugs sent by a former client (Goss) looking to retrieve his money. Filming starts next week. (Source: THR)
In yet another casting double whammy, True Blood star Grant Bowler (who plays biker-turned-werewolf Cooter on the show), has landed two film roles. He’s joined the Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro flick the Killer Elite, about the efforts of a private British vigilante group to eliminate a band of contract killers. Bowler will play Capt. James Cregg, an SAS officer and war hero who is one of the targets. He’s also got a role in Camilo Vila’s The City of Gardens, about a young California surfer in 1980 who is framed and thrown in a Peruvian jail for political prisoners before escaping. In that one Bowler will play a schizophrenic named Jesus Christ who is stuck in solitary confinement. John Robinson, James Remar and Deborah Unger also star. (Source: THR)
And the chain continues, as James Remar won’t just be in The City Of Gardens, as he’s also landed a role in Deathgames, alongside the previously announced Kellan Lutz and Sam Jackson. The movie is about a young man (Lutz) who is kidnapped and forced into the savage world of a modern gladiator arena, where men fight to the death for entertainment of the online masses in games orchestrated by Samuel L. Jackson. Also just announced for the film are Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev, who will play Lutz’s wife, and Derek Mears, who will be a fighter called Brutus Jackson. Remar will be a mysterious character named Tall Man. Jonah Loop is making his directorial debut with the film, which has just started shooting. (Source: THR)