What is Casting Couch? Today it’s mostly about smaller-name actors getting roles in upcoming projects, but that can be interesting too. Not everyone can be an old favorite coming back to an X-Men movie or getting hounded about the new Star Wars. It’s been known for a while that Mad Men’s Jon Hamm is a big fan of comedy—just look at how many lowly podcasts he’s appeared on, bit parts in comedies, and even his SNL host gigging for proof of that—but he’s yet to get his chance to take his love of the yuks further and actually star in a comedic feature. That might soon change though. Variety is reporting that he’s currently circling a project called Epic Fail that’s about a down-on-his-luck high school teacher who hires two students to kidnap his wife, in the hopes that if he swoops in and rescues her he might rekindle his marriage. The film has been written by Kevin Costello and will be directed by Mark Teitelman.

Tom Cruise is doing something very mech-warrior in Doug Liman’s upcoming actioner All You Need Is Kill. And to think that no one thought of giving him some bionic stilts to make him taller for Jack Reacher. Reshoots, anyone? (via ScreenCrush)

Bill Paxton has had a career for the ages. He’s taken multiple beatings at the hands of Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’s played cowboy with Kurt Russell, played astronaut with Tom Hanks, and even fought off aliens with Sigourney Weaver. One thing he’s never gotten a chance to do is share scenes with fellow superstar Tom Cruise, though, so the actor has decided to go back to his alien killing ways in order to make that happen. Variety is reporting that Paxton is in negotiations to become the latest name to join director Doug Liman’s (The Bourne Identity) upcoming, Japanese graphic novel adapted feature, All You Need is Kill. The basic story here is a kind of mix between Starship Troopers and Source Code, in that Cruise is playing a soldier in a war against aliens who keeps reliving the day he’s killed over and over again. As time keeps looping, and as Cruise keeps re-experiencing his death, he slowly learns from his mistakes and becomes a better soldier. It’s like if you gave Bill Murray’s character from Groundhog Day a big gun and told him to focus on fending off an alien invasion instead of buying Michael Shannon tickets to Wrestlemania.

Actress Emily Blunt has reportedly nabbed the female lead role in one of Tom Cruise‘s next projects, a sci-fi actioner not be confused with his Oblivion/Horizons that went through a long cycle of “short list” casting choices before settling on its two female leads. Fortunately, Doug Liman‘s All You Need is Kill has not subjected the movie news-consuming public to another drawn-out casting process and has just gone ahead and picked a dazzling lead. Variety reports that Blunt and Warner Bros. have ended a “long flirtation” for the part, with the Brit currently in talks for the role. The film is being adapted from a “light novel” of the same name by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, that centers on a new soldier (named Keiji Kiriya) who dies in his first battle – which happens to be against evil aliens who are taking over the Earth. Oddly enough, Keiji’s death is not the end of his life, as he wakes up every morning and relives the battle (and his death) over and over. It’s like a war-set sci-fi Groundhog Day. Blunt will reportedly play “another solider who fights alongside Cruise.” While I have not yet read the film’s highly lauded source material, a brief trip to the book’s Wikipedia page reveals a possible character for Blunt – “Rita Vrataski: A U.S. special forces soldier. Highly decorated and peerless in battle, she is seen as a hero by the entire world. In reality, she was caught in a time loop just like Keiji.” That

A story has been making the rounds today that Tom Cruise is more than likely set to star in director Doug Liman’s next venture, a sci-fi film called All You Need is Kill. Variety says that the star has been courted for the role for a while and seems to be poised to take it, while Inside Movies claims that the deed has already been done and the papers are all signed up, so no matter who you believe, it’s looking like this will be a project coming, at least eventually, to a theater near you. All You Need is Kill is set to be adapted from a graphic novel of the same name by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, and the story sees Cruise’s character caught in a Groundhog Day-type time loop where he lives the same day over and over again, but with a slight twist. Okay, maybe not so slight, the twist is that the day he’s living over and over again is one where he’s battling space aliens for the very survival of the planet. Every day he goes to battle, every day he dies, and every morning he wakes up anew. Until the 158th time he gives it a go, and he meets a character called (at least in the comic) The Bitch of War, who changes everything. Sounds crazy.

The Hollywood Reporter has an interesting piece on Tom Cruise, attempting to prove that he’s once again viable as a ground-moving A-list star. It’s an interesting opinion editorial that leaves out the larger points that 1) even when Cruise bombs, the movie usually makes over $200m and 2) it’s the entire idea of commercially block busting actors that’s diminishing. However, one thing that’s for sure is that Cruise himself isn’t. He’s got a few projects in the hopper, and at least one is a return to the world of science fiction. According to THR, there may be a second – the Doug Liman project We Mortals Are (which used to be called All You Need Is Kill and is still missing a predicate). The story focuses on a space soldier who, through science-y fiction, keeps living to fight on the day before he dies. After 158 wonderful deaths, he sees something different – a female entity known as The Bitch of War. It’s based off of the Hiroshi Sakurazaka manga, and, as it turns out, there’s something appropriate about placing Cruise in a movie about death and rebirth.