Movie Muser

Recently Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Oldman signed up to star in the thriller Criminal, and now another big name has joined the cast, as Ryan Reynolds has signed up for the movie, according to Variety.

The movie is about a ruthless killer who chooses to take part in a scientific experiment instead of spending the rest of his life in jail. He gets implanted with the brain of a recently-murdered CIA field operative in the hope that he will stop a diabolical plot.

It’s not currently 100% clear which actor will play which role, except that Oldman will be the head of the CIA. Presumably Reynolds and Costner will be the killer and the dead CIA agent, but it’s unclear which way round it will be.

Ariel Vromen is set to direct from a script by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg.

Like the main threat in its storyline, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies refuses to die, as after numerous casts, directors and screenwriters, a September shoot date has been set and Lily James, Sam Riley and Bella Heathcote are set to star, with Jack Huston likely to join them, according to Deadline.

The film rights to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies were sold back in 2009 when Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel was published. Since then helmers such as David O’Russell, Craig Gillespie and Mike White have come and gone, and everyone from Emma Stone to Natalie Portman has been up for the female lead.

Now though Lily James will play Elizabeth Bennett, with Sam Riley taking on the role of Mr. Darcy and Bella Heathcote as Elizabeth’s sister. Grahame-Smith’s book is a retelling of Pride & Prejudice, which keeps much of Jane Austen’s original text, but adds in a zombie apocalypse to give the classic love story an extra bit of zing.

Burr Steers directs, with the film expected to be in cinemas next year.

The decades-long journey to get Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Pastoral onto the big screen finally looks like it might be coming to fruition, with Philip Noyce in place to direct and Ewan McGregor recently signing on to star.

Now he has a co-star, as Jennifer Connelly has joined the movie. 

Connelly will play Dawn, the wife of McGregor’s Swede Levov. Swede is a legendary high school athlete who grows up to marry a former beauty queen and inherits his father’s business. However his seemingly perfect life is shatteeds when his daughter rebels by becoming a revolutionary and committing a savage act of political terrorism during the Vietnam War. 

We’ve still got a while to wait for the movie though, as is won’t start shooting until March 2015.

It’s been known for a while that Sony wants to build its own comic book universe based around the Spider-man characters, with a new film coming each year. However they’ve already had to shuffle things around a little, pushing Amazing Spider-man 3, while pulling the villain based Sinister Six up to 2016.

There’s also a Venon movie (with current rumours suggesting it will be called Venom Carnage), but that film is currently undated.

It also appears that with Amazing Spider-man 2 not quite living up to expectations, Deadline says the studio is doing a complete revamp of their Spider-man universe plans, and that includes adding in a female led superhero movie, which will come out in 2017.

As yet there’s no news on who this character might be, although the suggestion is that Silver Sable, Black Cat, Stunner, Firestarter and Spider-Woman are likely contenders. With Black Cat – as played by Felicity Jones – already introduced in Spider-man, she’s the current frontrunner for the character that’s getting their own movie.

Lisa Joy Nolan has been hired to write the script.

Tim Burton is taking a step away from the fantastical and returning to the world of the biopic he’s handled so well in the likes of Ed Wood. The film is Big Eyes, and now USA Today has debuted the first pics from the film.

The images feature Amy Adams as artist Margaret Keane, with Christoph Waltz as her husband, Walter (who are certainly a different pairing from Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Reynolds, who were eyed for the film before Burton decided to direct).

The film follows Margaret, whose paintings of large-eyed children were massively popular in the 1950s and 1960s. However initially Walter claimed he was behind the paintings. After the two fell out, she announced to the world that she was the true artist behind all the big-eyed paintings, and that the rather pompous and self-obsessed Walter (who spoke about himself in the third person and compared himself to Rembrandt and El Greco) stole all the credit for her work.

It set off a long running dispute between the two which ended in court battles, and a rather dramatic moment in court where the judge asked both to do some painting. Walter refused to do so because of a pain in his arm, but Margaret quickly crafted one of her trademark paintings.

Terence Stamp, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter and Jason Schwartzman. The movie is heading for a Christmas US release.

A few weeks ago it was rumoured that Sony was zeroing in on 21 Jump Street’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller to direct Ghostbusters 3. That turned out to be erroneous, but now THR reports that they are getting ready to make an offer to The Heat and Bridesmaids helmer Paul Feig.

However with Feig being a busy man and Sony wanting to start production as soon as it can, a lot of issues must be ‘worked out’ before the director officially signed on.

The THR report also adds the interesting titbit that while previous reports were correct that the new movie will pass the baton from the old crew to a younger set of Ghostbusters, at the centre of that crew are women.

Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, best known for their work on the US version of The Office and the comedy Bad Teacher, have written the script, which was recently revised to take into account the sad death of Harold Ramis.

Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson are likely to return in some capacity, and Sigourney Weaver has hinted she might be back too, and that her son Oscar, who’s not all grown up, will also feature. Bill Murray’s involvement still seems unlikely but hasn’t been completely ruled out.