Screen Daily and C7nema have offered an update on David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, the film based on the novel by Don DeLillo, and follows newly married billionaire Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) as he cheats on his wife, is pursued by a stalker (Paul Giamatti), gets attacked by a protester and gradually loses his entire fortune over the course of a single day. Word is both Juliette Binoche and Mathieu Amalric join Pattinson and Giamatti in the film, which is now expected to begin shooting on May 24 in Toronto.
Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans) has been tapped to direct the heist film Now You See Me for Summit Entertainment, he has confirmed with The Playlist. The film follows a crack FBI squad tracking a group of illusionists who pull off a series of bank heists during their performances and shower the profits on their audiences. And who said the heist genre is played out? I’m just curious to see how Summit, which has generally struggled to sell anything that doesn’t feature teen vampires, will market a film with a title as dumb as this one.
The $200,000 sci-fi flick Monsters garnered plenty of comparisons to District 9 upon its release, and it now looks like its star, Scoot McNairy, will be getting the Sharlto Copley treatment. He just landed the lead alongside Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell, Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo, Casey Affleck, Richard Jenkins and James Gandolfini in Cogan’s Trade. Another relative unknown, Aussie Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom), will join him as they play a pair of young junkies who perpetrate a heist that takes place during a high-stakes poker game held under the protection of the mob. McNairy is also in contention for roles in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
I also have another quick note on Vampire Hunter, as Heat Vision reports fanboy fave Mary Elizabeth Winstead will play Mary Todd, the wife of Abraham Lincoln (the previously announced Benjamin Walker).
Mila Kunis appears set to join James Franco in director Sam Raimi’s Wizard of Oz prequel, Oz, The Great and Powerful. Vulture reports Raimi and Franco agreed that Kunis would be perfect for the part of Theodorah, who goes on to become the Wicked Witch of the West. And it’s Kunis’s assured involvement that finally got Franco to commit to the picture. I understand Disney’s logic in casting these two in the film, but don’t they seem so desperate to just sign whichever “hot” or “buzzed about” actor they can get their hands on. It leads me to think they’re not overly confident in the material. Both Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp were both wanted for the lead role of Oz before Franco finally jumped on board.
Deadline reports Steve Carell has entered negotiations to star alongside Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel’s Great Hope Springs. Carell would play a marriage therapist who attempts to help rekindle the 31-year marriage of Streep and her yet-to-be-cast husband.
Lastly, Variety reports Summit’s previously untitled Seth Rogen cancer comedy has been officially named 50/50, a moniker that beat out such dandies as Live With It and I’m With Cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard and Anjelica Huston co-star for director Jonathan Levine, helmer of the under-seen The Wackness. It sounds like a winner… here’s hoping it fares better with the public than Funny People did.
