Sold. No, really. I’m sold on this project already. Deadline Tucson reports Ridley Scott is now officially signed on to direct The Counselor, from Cormac McCarthy‘s latest spec script (a probable move we reported on last week). But as if the prospect of Scott (who recently seems bent on getting back to his former glory) directing a fresh McCarthy script wasn’t enough to get you excited, word is now out that Scott is looking at his Prometheus star, Michael Fassbender, to lead the film. Again – sold.

The Counselor has been described, quite tantalizingly, as “No Country For Old Men on steroids.” The film is a modern tale that takes place in the American Southwest and will reportedly center on “a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip a toe in to the drug business without getting sucked down. It is a bad decision and he tries his best to survive it and get out of a desperate situation.” Hmm, dangerous business, bad choices that consume characters, seedy lifestyles? Sound a bit like Shame, meaning it’s something that Fassbender can do, and handily.

Producer Steve Schwartz’s quote on the project has been reported for a couple of weeks now, but it’s a fine one that gives some insight into what we can expect from The Counselor. He said, “since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with its sexual obsessions. It’s a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy’s wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.”

While McCarthy’s novel have spawned such films as No Country for Old Men, The Road, and All The Pretty Horses, this marks his first foray into straight screenwriting.

Phil Morrison, the director of June Bug, has another project in the works, and it’s worth noting because it’s going to be starring my two favorite Pauls currently working in Hollywood. Lucky Dog is a comedy about a couple of French-Canadian con men who go in together on a Christmas tree selling scam, despite the fact that their friendship has recently been on the outs. The previously mentioned Pauls are Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd, both accomplished comedic actors who also bring some dramatic chops to the table. So, the directions this one could go in are myriad.

Adding to the intrigue is the news that Sally Hawkins, an actress who has recently been impressing me in movies like Never Let Me Go and Submarine, has also signed on to join the cast. There isn’t any word on what kind of character she will be playing, but is it safe to assume that there might be some sort of love triangle going on among the former friends? Good luck with that one, Giamatti. Rudd is, like, cut. From marble. He’s gorgeous. He’s like this beautiful face and this incredible body, and I genuinely don’t care that he’s kinda lame. And I don’t even care that he cheats on me.

Wait…what was I saying? Anyway, Lucky Dog was written by Melissa James Gibson and it’s set to start filming next month in New York. [Deadline Camp Firewood]

Thérèse Raquin, the period drama that Elizabeth Olsen and Glenn Close are teaming up for, has got some new casting news. In case you don’t remember, Thérèse Raquin is an adaptation of an Émile Zola story penned and set to be directed by Charlie Stratton. It tells the story of a Parisian girl in 1867 who is forced into a loveless marriage with her sniveling, weakling cousin at the behest of her domineering aunt. Eventually the girl, Thérèse, becomes enamored of one of her husband’s friends, and then murder and infidelity ensue. Olsen, of course, it set to play the young girl, and Close the aunt. But what of the two male characters?

Originally I tried to spread the false rumor that Giovanni Ribisi would be playing the sickly husband, but thankfully nobody pays attention to what I say and the rumor didn’t spread. Now the role actually is in the process of being cast and the good news is that the actor who’s negotiating is probably the only person who has just as much experience at being sniveling and weird as Ribisi. Who better to play a sickly, annoying little turd than Draco Malfoy? That’s right, Daniel Radcliffe’s sneering nemesis from the last decade or so, Tom Felton, is looking likely to join the cast.

Now that the role of the husband has been filled, our eyes naturally turn to the role of the new boyfriend and murder co-conspirator. Who will work well playing a nemesis of Felton? Originally I theorized that we’d be seeing one of the kids getting ready to star in The Hunger Games, but now that Felton is in the husband role I’m going to change my guess to…nah, too easy. Let’s say John Hawkes playing his cult leader character again. [Deadline West Horsley]

It looks like Naomi Watts is slowly turning into the go-to girl to play tragic female figures with sunshiny locks. Watts has long been attached to play Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of author Joyce Carol Oates’ fictional take on the star in Blonde, though that project has been chattered about for so long with no firm details on shooting or production that it’s not shocking that Watts has now padded her schedule with another biopic.

This one is titled Caught in Flight, and it will chronicle the last two years of Princess Diana’s life. Jessica Chastain was first attached to play the role of Diana, during that mad rush to sign the up-and-comer to just about every film that would have her, but she’s now out (possibly due to, shock of all shocks, a too-full schedule), and Watts is in.

The film will be directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) and comes from a screenplay by Stephen Jeffreys (an award-winning playwright whose only film credit includes his adaptation of his own play, The Libertine, back in 2004). The film will focus “on the last two years of the Princess’ life and charts how finding true personal happiness for the first time allowed her to evolve into a major international campaigner and humanitarian.”

While Chastain is a very talented actress, she did seem a bit too young and green for the role, while Watts suits the role much better, both appearance and experience-wise. [Variety, via HeyUGuys]

Have you been following the development of this baseball drama Trouble With the Curve? It started out as just a glimmer, a hope. It was maybe the project that would bring Clint Eastwood out of acting retirement. A story about an aging baseball scout who is losing his vision and who is embarking on one last recruitment trip in the company of his adult daughter sounded perfect for an old grizzly bear like Eastwood, and since those first days of maybes the project has developed quite nicely.

First it became official, and got a release date of September 28, 2012. Then it started filling out its supporting cast with exciting names. Amy Adams came on to play the role of Eastwood’s daughter, and Justin Timberlake got picked up to play her love interest. This thing was looking like an all-star lineup already.

But with news that they’re bringing one of the most underutilized players in Hollywood on board, I think this one might go all the way. According to Variety, John Goodman has just signed on to play a baseball scout and longtime friend of the Eastwood character’s named Pete Klein. That’s right, The Babe himself is returning to the world of onscreen baseball.

Not to go off on a rant here, but Goodman has been doing great work his entire career. And, at least, since The Big Lebowski, you would think that he would be one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood. I mean, he’s doing fine, but where are all the starring roles? If you were a filmmaker, wouldn’t your number one goal be to keep coming up with awesome characters for John Goodman to play? I fully feel that we need to do everything we can to get this guy up to the level of, say, a Philip Seymour Hoffman or a Paul Giamatti.

Trouble With the Curve is a good start, but let’s begin a campaign to make 2012 the year of Goodman. I’ll go start a petition somewhere.

Due to her Oscar-winning role in Black Swan and her pregnancy-imposed break from acting, Natalie Portman has been the subject of much talk in the movie world. When will she come back to work? What will her first post-Oscar role be? There have been reports of filmmakers as big as the Wachowskis actively recruiting her to come on board their projects, but still no word of an official signing. That is until now. Sorry, Hollywood directors, but Terrence Malick has beaten you to the punch. And, just to smear some dirt in your wounds, he’s done it twice.

Deadline Ottawa is reporting that Portman has signed on to be in not one, but two of Malick’s upcoming projects, both shooting in 2012, which will mark her much anticipated return to acting. The first film is the Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett-starring Knight of the Cups, which is scheduled to start shooting this summer. The second is a film called Lawless, which sees Portman teamed again with Bale and Blanchett, in addition to other notable names like Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara. This film is scheduled to shoot in the fall.

There isn’t much reliable information about what these movies will be about floating around out there, but I’m starting to find my curiosity piqued. Malick doing two films back-to-back, reusing much of the same cast for both; it all seems very unusual. What does he have up his sleeve, and why has whatever it is drawn in so many high profile actors? These are the sort of mysteries I like, because you know that whatever their answer, it’s going to be good news.

Sometime around 2008, when The Twilight Saga was proving to be beyond bankable, bookstores were deluged with a bevy of YA titles that all seemed hellbent on capturing the presumed magic of Stephenie Meyer’s series. As if some of their plotlines didn’t already sound interchangeable enough (magic, mythical creatures, forbidden love, weak characterization), most of their cover art looked oddly similar – which is why I can recall seeing the covers of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl‘s Caster Chronicles series, but never happened to pick them up to take a look. It looks like I might need to change that, at least if I want to stay current with my YA-books-getting-turned-into-movies news.

The first book in the five-book series is set for a big screen adaptation, thanks to Warner Bros. and Alcon Entertainment, and while Beautiful Creatures already got a major credibility bump when Viola Davis joined its cast last week, now the real news is out – who will star as the leads in yet another tale of star-crossed lovers.

Jack O’Connell (“Skins,” This is England, Harry Brown) and relative newcomer Alice Englert (The Water Diary) are set to play Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes, respectively. Beautiful Creatures is set in the small town of Gatlin, South Carolina and follows the fortunes of Lena and Ethan after the bewitching Lena moves to town. What I’ve gleaned from some Internet sleuthing is that Lena possesses some type of supernatural power (the fan site CasterGirls tells us that a caster is “a race of Supernatural with varying powers, featured in The Caster Chronicles” or “a person with the power to be him/herself, regardless of what other think”) and that it entangles her both with Ethan and a nasty brand of family curse that implicates much of the town.

Garcia and Stohl have also penned “Beautiful Darkness,” which was published back in October of 2010, and “Beautiful Chaos,” which followed last October. With a planned five-book series, you better believe that Warner and Alcon are looking to make this one a series. Richard LaGravenese has adapted the script for Beautiful Creatures and will direct from it.

Will this be the next Twilight? It remains to be seen, but kids these days could do far worse than some lite Gothic lit. [Variety, via FirstShowing]

Steve Martin‘s talents extend far beyond just stand-up comedy, acting, sombrero-wearing, and banjo-playing, as the multi-hyphenate has also dabbled in the writing world, including a swim with fiction with three novels (fine, “Shopgirl” was a novella). That first novel(la) was turned into a film back in 2005, and now Martin’s latest work of grown-up fiction will join it on the big screen.

An Object of Beauty will be based on Martin’s 2010 novel of the same name, and the project is now getting outfitted with not only three producers, but an Oscar-nominated star. Amy Adams will lead the film as central character Lacey Yeager, as well as producing it alongside Maven Pictures producers Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray. There’s no word yet on the rest of the film’s cast and crew, including whether or not Martin will adapt his own book for the big screen (as he did with Shopgirl).

Adams’ producer duties prove that she’s got more than just a passing interest in the role – which is of particular note, as the complicated character of Lacey is quite distant from the sunny, smiling image that Adams has cultivated over the past few years (The Fighter notwithstanding). Martin’s book focuses squarely on Lacey, a go-getter in the New York art world who starts off as a plucky intern at Sotheby’s, before some questionable choices (both in terms of career advancement and actual legality) force her to reinvent herself as a gallery owner. Told through the narrative voice of a male friend of Lacey’s, the book also focuses on Lacey’s checkered romantic life, littered with men who shape her career in different ways. While Lacey would be hard to classify as a “likable” leading lady, she’s compelling to read about, and the book is a well-crafted read that flies right by.

There’s little on Adams’ existing resume that’s comparable to the Lacey role – she’s plucky, not sunny, and though she’s gritty and determined, she make some incredibly poor and stupid choices (though, oddly enough, she’s not sympathetic), and she trades on her good looks and sex appeal more often than she defers to her (quite solid) intellect. If Adams pulls it off, Lacey will be a solid departure for her, and a real feather in her acting cap.

Adams will next be seen in Man of Steel as another headstrong female character, Lois Lane. [THR, via ComingSoon]

In 2010, Patrick Wilson got haunted in Insidious. In 1999, Lili Taylor got haunted in The Haunting. Now the two are heading back into the haunted house together with Vera Farmiga and Ron Livingston in James Wan’s The Warren Files.

Now they’ll have children to look after as ghosts chase them around in New England.

According to Variety, Mackenzie Foy (Twilight) and Joey King (who will play young Talia Al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises) have both been tapped to play young members of the based-on-real-life Perron family who claimed they were living with spirit from beyond in the 1970s. Taylor and Livingston play the adult members of the family, while Wilson and Farmiga play ghost investigators The Warrens.

So, for those keeping track, with Insidious, The Warren Files and Insidious 2, James Wan is going to be telling ghost stories for a long time.

Way back in 2008, the Jim Henson Co. picked up a spec script from Todd Berger that took a standard Muppet trope (a world where people and puppets co-exist and no one thinks it’s weird), turned it on its head (the puppets are treated like second-class citizens), then splashed blood all over that turned head (the puppet stars of a cancelled kids television show start to get killed off), and then threw in some classic crime noir (“a disgraced detective-turned-private eye puppet takes on the case”).

But since that first bit of news about The Happytime Murders, information has been relatively soft (as felt), until today’s brief that IM Global is taking the film (with attached director Brian Henson) to the Berlin International Film Festival next week in hopes of selling it.

While that’s certainly good news, it does come with a caveat – as Deadline Rotterdam claims that “Kathryn Heigl is in advanced negotiations to star,” but maybe there’s some other actress out there named Kathryn Heigl that is an up-and-comer who is super into puppets…or maybe that’s just another one of those little Deadline mistakes that will get corrected without a word later today. Fine, it’s Katherine Heigl who might star in The Happytime Murders, and even if she’s going to be portrayed as a puppet, that’s just unsuitable casting.

I think Sean O’Connell over at Cinema Blend sums it up best, as he writes “if I’m being honest, this sounds far too original for Heigl, whose comfort zone has proven to be relationship comedies with the likes of Josh Duhamel, James Marsden and Gerard Butler. Yes, she thought outside of the box when she played Seth Rogen’s love interest in Knocked Up, but she promptly shit-talked Judd Apatow and the material in subsequent press interviews.” That’s pretty much it in a nutshell – the film sounds way too original and special for someone like Heigl and, though she’s tried to stretch herself in the past, it’s been overshadowed by her often-abrasive personality.

While Heigl has proven bankable in the past, her latest film, last week’s opener One For the Money came in at just third place for the weekend, pulling in $11m against its $40m budget. That soft opening might prove that Heigl is finally on the outs, and that everyone who claimed that the fact that film is based on a very popular series of frisky crime novels would help it out at the box office was wrong. But if that’s so, does that mean that Heigl has wised up and decided to board Happytime to change her image? If that’s the case, fair enough, Heigl, it will do you good to do something different (I still love My Father the Hero).

But, seriously, was Jason Segel not available for this?

Actors Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo are already set to tear apart city blocks together as members of The Avengers this summer, so why shouldn’t they be in a love story together as well? Sounds like the logical next step. To that end they’ve both joined Once writer/director John Carney’s next film, Can a Song Save Your Life?

Why the ridiculous title? Well, because, like Once, this movie is also about musicians falling in love. This time the story is set in New York City, where Johansson will be playing a plucky young singer trying to start a career in the music business after getting dumped by her stupid boyfriend. While there she meets a charming though mumble-mouthed record producer (Ruffalo) who’s been down on his lucky lately (you know, because he’s a record producer), and the two start up a fling that manages to turn both of their lives around.

Wow, that plot synopsis kind of gives everything away. I guess the answer is yes. Yes, a song can save your life. And explaining the end of your movie to Variety before the thing even gets made can save everybody else the ten dollars they would have spent on a ticket.

Aw, who am I kidding? I would be hard-pressed to pick which of these stars I have a bigger crush on. I’ll definitely be going and seeing it for them.

South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho‘s English-language debut was always going to be a hotly anticipated feature, but as the cast for Snow Piercer rounds out, it’s become obvious that The Host director is really going all out for this one. The next star to join the sci-fi indie film is Octavia Spencer, who just won a SAG Award for Best Supporting Actress and is viewed as the frontrunner for the Oscar in the same category for her work in The Help. She joins an already impressive (both in terms of talent and how wonderfully varied it is) cast that includes Chris Evans, The Host star Kang Ho Song, and veteran talents John Hurt and Tilda Swinton.

The film, which has been adapted from the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige has been co-scripted by Bong (with the most recent draft coming from Kelly Masterson), and is set in a future world ruined by a failed attempt to finally stop the fallout from global warming. The experiment to end global warming has led to an Ice Age that has destroyed all living creatures, except for those who live on the Snow Piercer, ” a train that travels around the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine.” The film will center on a revolution that stirs up between the train’s inhabitants, who had previously settled into an uneasy class system. Spencer’s role will be that as a mother who takes up with the revolution ” in order to save her son” (from what, we don’t quite know). [THR]

Joel Edgerton and Jessica Chastain both had pretty big years in 2011. Edgerton broke onto the Hollywood scene with a big role in the high-profile The Thing remake and also turned a lot of heads with his powerful performance in the MMA drama Warrior. And Chastain, well she had a critically acclaimed supporting role in pretty much every art film that came out during the calendar year. So, to hear that these two budding superstars are teaming up on a movie should be pretty good news. But to hear that they’ve signed on to star together in two films with very unique premises, well that’s just downright intriguing.

Deadline Liverpool has posted a press release from Myriad Pictures saying that the duo is set to star in both The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: His and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Hers. The two films, both from writer/director Ned Benson, will tell the story of the same rocky marriage, but one from the perspective of the husband and the other from the perspective of the wife. Edgerton’s character is said to be a restaurant owner, and Chastain’s a woman who is going back to school.

Doing two movies that tell the same story but from different viewpoints sounds like it could have the potential to be very interesting, but are they really going to be able to get people to pay to see the same story twice? Myriad CEO Kirk D’Amico seems to think so. He says of the project, “Ned has created rich and engaging characters. They are complex, and it is unique to have two different scripts to tell the story. It doesn’t matter which script you read first, you absolutely want to read the other perspective.”

Say that doesn’t hold to be true though, and seeing one of these movies doesn’t make you immediately want to catch the other, will that really matter? Not necessarily, because apparently they’re both designed to stand on their own as well. D’Amico explains, “We have to make both films work on their own, both for the buyers but also for the audiences. Together these films will describe a fully, more complete look at these characters and their lives.”

That “for the buyers” line is interesting. If this set of movies becomes successful, might it be the beginning of a new fad in Hollywood? Shooting two films together, that basically use the same sets and the same actors, but can be sold twice, could be very profitable. We saw Harry Potter start a trend where big literary series are now often splitting their books into several different film adaptations, might that be taken one step further where a different movie starts being made for each character? If that’s the case, then the Hunger Games franchise might get real confusing, real fast. I’ll totally watch Catching Fire: Katniss and Catching Fire: Haymitch, but if they think I’m paying for Catching Fire: Peeta then they must be crazy!

We’ve been in need of a new Spike Jonze feature since 2009′s Where the Wild Things Are, and it looks as if the filmmaker is planning an interesting new film with a stellar cast. The untitled feature (written and to be directed by Jonze) will center on a man “who falls in love with the voice of a computer, similar to the Siri feature on the new iPhone.” With Joaquin Phoenix already on board, we can only guess that he’ll play that love-struck techno-wonk, but just who of the reported three new female cast members would play the tantalizing voice?

Deadline Cupertino reports that Carey Mulligan, Amy Adams, and Samantha Morton are all in talks to star in the film alongside Phoenix. My bet for the voice? Adams, because who else has the same pep and charm? Also adding to my complete speculation – the fact that Morton and Mulligan bare a striking resemblance to each other that I cannot help but think would work quite well in the “real world” confines of the film.

This project is not to be confused with another Jonze film  that will star Phoenix and Mulligan – that’s the one that is being penned by Charlie Kaufman. That film is reportedly “a satire about how world leaders gather to figure out all the seismic events that will take place in the worlds, from oil prices to wars that will be waged,” which sounds particularly wonderful.

If Adams, Morton, and Mulligan do get on board the project, Jonze has picked himself three actresses that are almost frighteningly in-demand. All three have giant projects coming up – Adams’ work includes Man of Steel, Trouble With the Curve, and The Master; Morton has got both John Carter and Cosmopolis coming out soon; and Mulligan has completed her work on The Great Gatsby and is currently shooting Inside Llewyn Davis.

The last time we heard about director Richard Ayoade’s follow-up to his quirky and likable teen drama Submarine, we were hit with the news that Jesse Eisenberg had been cast in the lead. The Double is based on a Fyodor Dostoyevsky novella called “The Double: A Petersburg Poem,” which is a trippy tale about an average Joe who’s being followed around by his exact double, an evil doppelganger intent on ruining his life.

Eisenberg, of course, is playing the lead and the lead’s evil twin, which is exciting in itself; but now that THR is reporting that up-and-coming young actress Mia Wasikowska is also joining the cast, my excitement surrounding this one has, well, doubled.

Seeing as this is less a direct adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novella and more a work written by Ayoade and Avi Korine that’s inspired by the original story, it’s hard to say what role Wasikowska will actually be playing in the film. But seeing as she’s a major actress, I guess we can infer that it’s going to be a large one? What THR does seem to know for sure is that Ayoade promises that his film is “funny, frightening and dream-like” and it will “reflect on loneliness and our need to love and be loved.” Sounds like The Double is going to share some themes with Submarine. Is this the first glimpse we’re going to get at Ayoade the auteur? Couple this onscreen duo with the satiric wit that Ayoade displayed in his first film, and I can’t wait to find out.

In what can only be a (giggle) magical turn of events (or a director and star wanting to work together again, whichever), Harry Potter‘s own Hermione Granger is joining back up with director David Yates for her next project. Granger – er, sorry – Emma Watson will star in Your Voice in My Head, based on Emma Forrest‘s memoir of the same name, which she is penning for the screen.

Published just last May, Forrest’s book is based on some a very personal story, one that serves as a memoir of a specific time in her life after a tragic, and somewhat bizarre, death. In her early twenties, Forrest was living in New York City and was caught up in what appeared to be a satisfying life, complete with a great job and a meaningful romance. But however charmed Forrest’s life might have looked from the outside, she was suffering on the inside, to the point that she ultimately sought out a therapist to help her and her bi-polar disorder. She found a beloved psychiatrist who helped her immeasurably – until the day she called his office to set a new appointment and was told that he had passed away. Your Voice in My Head charts her recovery from that tragedy.

Deadline Henderson also reports that Tom Hanks and George Clooney are “in the mix” for the role of the psychiatrist.

Yates has been attached to the film since December, and he too recognizes the magical tone of the film, calling it “it’s a small film, hard hitting and with elements of magic realism.” But will there be dragons?

Personally, I am quite excited to see Yates and Watson teaming back up on a project that I was already very much anticipating. I can only guess that the relationship that the pair already have will help Watson bring to life a complicated character in beautiful and tragic story.

Atom Egoyan’s planned cinematic dramatization of the infamous West Memphis 3 triple homicide story, Devil’s Knot (based on the book by Mara Leveritt of the same name), seems to be trucking along nicely. The first news that came out about this project was that Reese Witherspoon had been cast as Pam Hobbs, the mother of one of the three victims in this grizzly murder tale. That gave a project that’s still looking for funding and distribution some much-needed star power.

The newest bit of casting news should help in that regard as well. Deadline Eastleigh is reporting that the 2011 winner for the Best Actor Oscar, Colin Firth, is joining the cast as well. That should put even more attention and even a little bit of prestige on this project, which Deadline says is now pretty close to getting funding and distribution deals in place.

Firth joins the cast playing Ron Lax, a private investigator working on the case who did a lot of the initial work that cast doubt on the guilt of the three defendants, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr. It was his investigation that found DNA in the ropes tying up one of the victims that implicated not the three teenage boys, but Terry Hobbs, the husband of the woman Witherspoon is playing, in the murders.

Devil’s Knot is a dense, interesting story that seems to be putting together a strong cast, so I want to see it based on those criteria alone. But now I’m super pumped about it because of the always fun chance to hear Colin Firth do a Southern accent, as well. How will his cultured, British tongue manage to wrap itself around that Tennessee twang?

For more West Memphis 3 cinematic stuff, check out Kate’s Sundance review of West of Memphis.

A few weeks ago, Twitch exclusively reported that Taylor Swift had been offered the role of Eponine in Tom Hooper‘s Les Miserables adaptation – news which struck most people with ears and eyes as a terrible pick (myself heartily included). But it looks like that news was perhaps a bit too premature, as Swift will not be playing the rich girl turned street urchin (and one segment of the story’s love triangle). Instead, the all-star production has gone in a different direction – by reportedly hiring on an actual trained Broadway actress who has played the role before.

Samantha Barks will take on the role, which she previously played in the wildly popular 25th anniversary concert version of the classic story. The news was announced by Cameron Mackintosh (who is also a producer on Hooper’s film) live on stage at the Manchester Palace during the curtain call of a performance of Oliver!, a production in which Barks was playing the role of Nancy. While it’s unclear at this time, most observers seem to think the official news was a surprise even to Barks, who apparently looked both elated and surprised by the news.

Barks has trained at the Arts Educational school, which she left to join a BBC reality show called I’d Do Anything, which sounds a bit like an American Idol type program, one launched specifically to find a new Nancy for the Oliver! production. She made it to the top three, which she followed with a part in the workshop for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies, her stage debut in the national tour of Cabaret, the lead role in Aladdin, her West End debut as Eponine in Les Miserables, capped off withe her work in the the anniversary concert. Now, doesn’t that sound like someone built for the role?

The casting of Barks is perhaps some of the best news I’ve heard in regards to Hooper’s Les Miz, and certainly the most encouraging when it comes to the quality of showmanship and singing we might expect from it. [Broadway World, via Movieline]

Now that Warner Bros. has given an official release date to the Clint Eastwood- and Amy Adams-starring father-daughter-baseball-scouting-oops-think-someone-is-going-blind film, Trouble With The Curve, for September 28, it’s time they get to filling out the rest of the roster. Next up at bat? Justin Timberlake!

Deadline Memphis reports that Timberlake will co-star in the film as ” a rival scout who is sweet on the elder scout’s daughter.” Both Eastwood and Timberlake’s characters will presumably be going head to head to land a hot new prospect. Other hot things will likely also go down between Timberlake and Adams, if you get what I’m saying here.

Timberlake’s focus has switched to acting in recent years, and he’s been rounding his resume out with stuff that has been, at the very least, interesting. He’s hit just about every genre (comedy, romantic comedy, drama, sci-fi, animation), and he’s worked with some great directors (well, mainly David Fincher). Next up for him? The Coen brothers’ Inside Lleywn Davis, which should be another huge cinematic step for the actor. A sports drama co-starring Eastwood? I can see it.

With the reign of Pixar ever-so-steadily slipping (2011 marks the first year that the studio released a new film, Cars 2 in this case, that was not nominated for Best Animated Feature), it looks like another studio is looking to capitalize on original and appealing ideas.

DreamWorks Animation is now casting for their next original film, Me & My Shadow, which will center “on Stan, a shadow who yearns for a more exciting life than being attached to a timid human named Stanley Grubb. When a crime in the shadow community puts both of their lives in danger, Stan is forced to take control of Stanley, thrusting both of them into an adventure featuring a shadowy villain, who intends to lead a rebellion to take over the human world.” The studio has cast Bill Hader as shadow Stan, with Josh Gad as his scaredy-cat human Stanley and Kate Hudson as Stanley’s real world love interest.

While the film’s plot is cute enough already, the studio is also looking to branch out with a bit of a gimmick that ties into it – the film will be made up two different kinds of animation. The “shadow world” will reportedly be hand-drawn, while Stanley’s “human world” will be CG.

Alessandro Carloni will make his directorial debut with Shadow, but his resume includes a very encouraging sign – he was head of story on DreamWorks Animation’s thoroughly excellent How to Train Your Dragon. The script will come from Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, which is based on an original draft from Steve Bencich and Ron J. Friedman.

Hader has the best voicework resume of the bunch, voicing main character Flint Lockwood in the positively delightful Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. He’s also contributed to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil. Wait, did I say “best”? Umm, let’s just focus on Cloudy and move on from that. Gad’s voice talents have appeared in Marmaduke and will next be heard in the upcoming Ice Age: Continental Drift. Hudson will be making her animated debut with the film, which is somewhat shocking, considering she’s already plundered the depths (lows) of romantic comedies and should have switched genres years ago.

The film is already set for a November 13, 2013 release. [THR]