Quite a few new casting announcements have been made in Hollywood, so here’s the round-up…
Someone needs to tell Taylor Lautner that despite his newfound fame, it’s not physically possible for him to star in every movie. However, to celebrate his 18th Birthday (which is today), he’s apparently attached himself to yet another new project, called Abduction. He’ll play a teen who has long felt disconnected from his parents and figures out why (although the reason hasn’t been disclosed). This unleashes a chain of violent events and enters Bourne territory. Lautner’s involvement was announced as the script is yet to find a studio home, and Taylor is likely to up the price they can command. However with endless other movies, including more Twilight, Stretch Armstong, Max Steel, Northern Lights, Cancun and Vision Quest already on his roster, there’s no way Lautner is going to be able to fit them all in, so some of them will have to go. (Source: Deadline Hollywood)
Warner Bros has bought a the pitch by William and Scott Bindley, which comes with Russell Brand attached to star. He’ll play a David Beckham-like millionaire soccer star/playboy who gets arrested in a West Texas and sentenced to community service. His task: coach the hapless local high school soccer team in an American football obsessed town. Although it’s slightly difficult to imagine Russell Brand as a soccer player, he certainly has screen presence, and after his stint in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Hollywood seems to be lining him up to be a star. (Source: Deadline Hollywood)
Jeffrey Dean Morgan, whose main job as an actor seems to have been to die in everything from Watchmen to the TV series Supernatural and Grey’s Anatomy, has signed up to star in the psychological thriller, The Unblinking Eye, from Solomon Kane director Michael Bassett. He’ll play homicide detective John Callisto, now a retired recluse after being nearly murdered by a serial killer, who is tracked down by a relentless journalist. As the two confront each other, dark secrets from both their pasts come to light. The film is set to start shooting in May. (Source: THR)
It’s been known for a while that Alice In Wonderland actress, Mia Wasikowska, and Inglourious Basterds’ Michael Fassbender are set to play the main characters in Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, about the titular governess who falls for her employer, only to find out he has dark secrets. Now some new actors are circling the project. Jamie Bell, Judi Dench, Sally Hawkins and Imogen Poots are all in negotations to join the film. Bell will play St. John, a clergyman who turns out to be Eyre’s cousin. Dench will be Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper of Thornfield Manor, while Hawkins is Mrs. Reed, Eyre’s aunt, who adopts her but abuses and neglects her. There’s no news on what role Poots will play. (Source: THR)
A couple of days ago we reported that Amber Tamblyn was in talks to play the female lead in 127 Hours, Danny Boyle’s film about a man (played by James Franco), who gets his arm trapped under a boulder and lies there dying for days, before doing the unthinkable and hacking his own arm off with a dull blade. While most of the film will be Franco under a rock, it turns out Tamblyn won’t be the only woman in the movie, as Kate Mara (Iron Man 2) is also negotiating an unknown role in the film. (Source: THR)
Glenn Close is to reprise one of her most famous stage roles on screen. She will star in, co-produce and has co-scripted the costume drama Albert Nobbs, a screen version of The Singular Life Of Albert Nobbs, which won Close acclaim on Broadway in the 1980s. Orlando Bloom, Michael Gambon and Janet McTeer have signed up to co-star, with Rodrigo Garcia directing. Close will play a woman in Nineteenth Century Ireland who disguises herself as a man in order to survive, in what’s described as a Gosford Park-style below-stairs drama. (Source: Screen Daily)