What is Casting Couch? It’s a roundup of all the day’s most important casting news. Today we have a bunch of legit reports, and one of those dreaded short-lists. It’s a short-list concerning that much talked about Natalie Portman movie, Jane Got a Gun though, so it’s kind of a pressing matter. It looks like Captain America may be trading in his sidekick Bucky in order to team up with The Sundance Kid. Deadline is reporting that Robert Redford, the patron saint of independent cinema, is making a surprise move and negotiating to join the cast of Marvel’s very commercial superhero sequel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. If he officially signs, he’ll reportedly be playing a high-ranking member of SHIELD, that government agency run by Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in all of the Marvel movies. I wonder if he gets his own flying aircraft carrier? If he does, that could be the thing that seals the deal.

Biopics are always praised for their lead actor or actress’ realistic or unique portrayal of the subject, but what of the supporting cast? Sure, we do recognize their efforts, they might even receive an Academy Award, but rarely are they honored with something as prestigious as an online comedy list. It’s time to rectify that. Here are some of the more talented, memorable, or uncanny portrayals of people who were important enough to be featured in a movie, but not important enough for that movie to be about them.

Elite Squad director José Padilha‘s RoboCop just began principal photography, but for the past few weeks things have not been looking up for this mostly unwanted PG-13 remake. There was word over Padilha being pushed around behind-the-scenes, that the script is a disaster, and the fantastic prospect of Hugh Laurie terrorizing the futuristic cop was killed. So, after a string of disappointing news, this first-look at Joel Kinnaman rocking the new RoboCop gear isn’t helping matters. Check out Kinnaman looking more like a superhero than a man whose shot up body bits are being reused as a symbol of facism, and while you’re at it, read why that’s a bad thing:

The twelve-year run of prohibition in the United States was a period that punctuated social imparity, religious activism, and was a launchpad for some of the biggest names in organized crime. Basically, it’s a mixed bag of deeply interesting subject matter that is spot-on perfect for the big screen. Director John Hillcoat‘s Lawless is a violent slice of that era’s dying days. Distilled by screenwriter Nick Cave from the pages of Matt Bondurant‘s 2008 historical novel, “The Wettest County in the World,” Lawless tells the story of the Bondurant brothers, a family of moonshiners in the Blue Ridge Foothills of Franklin County, Virginia. In the midst of the Great Depression, the citizenry of Franklin County carved a living out of  making moonshine, and none are more successful than the brothers Bondurant, who run a healthy bootlegging racket.

The moviegoing world was saddened earlier this week when it was learned director Tony Scott had died. Despite the manner of his death, it’s no less sad when a filmmaker such as Scott, who continued making films well into his 60, had many more films to helm. We felt it was time to hear some filmmaking insight from the man himself, which leads us to True Romance. The movie itself is a modern classic, an energetic tale of love, drugs, and a whole bunch of bullets courtesy of fledgling – at the time – screenwriter Quentin Tarantino. He also provides a commentary for the film, a rarity for the Pulp Fiction writer/director, but we’ll cover that another time. This is Tony Scott’s time, and here, without further ado, are all the things we learned listening to him speak about his film, True Romance.

2010′s The Expendables gave fans of iconic action hero badasseration a taste of what it would be like to experience some of our favorite face punching, public property demolishing, one-liner dropping stars of recent yesteryear share the big screen. It was over the top, explodey good times. Stallone, Li, Crews, Statham, Lundgren, Couture, and Rourke were a fun sample course. Sly, never being one to shy away from sequels (still waiting on Cliffhanger: Hang Some More), poured moonshine in the formula and give us more Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and the perpetual awesomeness that is Chuck Norris in The Expendables 2.   Even better, the villain finally gets an equal measure of excellence in the form of The Muscles from that Place in Belgium, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Sorry Eric Roberts, I love you but…Sharktopus. Still, one JCVD chair-splits punch alone isn’t enough to compete with those  three decades worth of action superstars, and whomever tangles with them next will have to compete with an action aficionado wet dream of additional Expendables. What is a top bad guy to do? Contract out — pull an equal measure of baddies from the past together and give Barney Ross and company a run for their money. Below are my ten Anti-Expendables, in no particular order.

When you take all of the distaste for remakes and reboots that’s out there and add it with the love that people have for Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 film RoboCop, it adds up to a situation where not very many people are looking forward to José Padilha’s upcoming re-do of the material. And yet, with every casting announcement that this new RoboCop makes, it’s becoming harder and harder to not be at least a little excited about its possibilities. First off, Padilha cast an on-the-rise young actor who’s done nothing but impress so far named Joel Kinnaman in the title role. Then he systematically surrounded his star with supporting names that everyone loves, like Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Laurie, Abbie Cornish, Jay Baruchel, and Jackie Earle Haley. It would be hard to sneeze at that cast no matter what they were being assembled for, but get them all together for a post-apocalyptic tale of robot cops versus violent street gangs and evil corporations, and it’s not too difficult to start forgetting how much you dislike all of the remakes going on in Hollywood. I don’t know how they get ya, but that’s how they get ya.

With temperatures on the rise and Comic-Con officially over, there is one place comic book fans can still find solace in the middle of these hot summer months – your local movie theaters. Christopher Nolan is poised to complete his epic Batman trilogy with the highly anticipated The Dark Knight Rises, set to hit theaters this weekend. Not only will Christian Bale be returning as Gotham’s caped crusader, he will once again be joined by his trusty butler, Alfred (Michael Caine), his business manager/tech wizard, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and Batman champion, Commission Gordon (Gary Oldman) – to name a few. And in true Nolan fashion, some other faces familiar to the director’s work will help round out this final battle with Inception alums Tom Hardy taking on the villain role as Bane and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as hopeful police officer, John Blake. But Nolan’s affinity for working with those he has before does not stop at the cast. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight composer Hans Zimmer (whose score for Inception was one of the most memorable of 2010) returns to finish out the trilogy as well. While most of us will have to wait until this Friday (or for you late-nighters, Thursday at midnight) to see the conclusion of this heroic tale, Zimmer’s score (now available) takes us there now.

Christopher Nolan‘s third and final Batman film hits theaters this summer, and it promises to be huge in pretty much every way. It’s all but guaranteed to be one of the year’s highest grossers, and fans are equally assured to eat it up like Trader Joe’s Speculoos Cookie Butter. The film opens eight years after Batman (Christian Bale) took the fall for Harvey Dent’s crimes at the end of The Dark Knight and sees a new master criminal in the form of the terrorist Bane (Tom Hardy). He’s forced back into the spotlight to protect the city, but by the looks of things he may not fare that well in his first face-off with the muscular, muffled Bane. Early teasers have underwhelmed some viewers, but WB has just released their final full-length trailer, and it’s loaded with new scenes of action, scale and a real sense of finality. There are some genuine chill-inducing moments here that not even the appearance of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman can ruin. (I still don’t see how her presence here turns out okay. And by ‘her’ I mean both the actress and the character.) Check out the new trailer below.

Hugh Laurie came to America from the UK after a successful career in comedy and quickly found himself playing lead in a critical and commercial hit on the Fox network. His film work over here has been relegated to small, supporting roles, but it looks like he may get a chance to flex his dark side on the big screen in a big way. Per Variety, Laurie is in talks to join MGM’s upcoming Robocop remake for director Jose Padilha as the film’s main villain. He has large, partially bald shoes to fill if he hopes to be half as entertaining as the original’s main baddies played by Kurtwood Smith and Ronny Cox. Clarence Boddicker is a memorably brutal (and brutally funny) psycho, and Dick Jones is the epitome of a dickish CEO, but while it’s rumored Laurie would be playing a brand new version of the latter he’d kill in either villainous flavor. The film is also set to star Joel Kinnaman in the title role, Gary Oldman as a the scientist behind the technology, Abbie Cornish as Mrs. Robocop and Samuel Jackson.

Casting for Jose Padilha’s upcoming reboot of the RoboCop franchise seems to be coming along swimmingly. First he landed up-and-coming The Killing actor Joel Kinnaman to come on board as the main character, Alex Murphy, who starts off as a normal police office and then gets blown away by a bunch of bad guys, resulting in his transformation into a robotic cop. Then he really swung for the fences and got Gary Oldman to agree to come on board as a morally conflicted scientist, the only person in the film who foresees the eventual complications that might come from resurrecting dead people and turning them into robots. The latest bit of casting news might be the biggest of all, however, given the recent world-beating success of The Avengers. Heat Vision is reporting that Jedi Knight, head of SHIELD, and longtime badass Samuel L. Jackson has joined the cast as well. He’ll be playing a character named Pat Novak, who’s said to be a charismatic television mogul. There’s not yet much information out there about how closely Padilha’s remake will resemble Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 version of RoboCop, but seeing as this is a property that naturally lends itself to social criticism, one can assume that Jackson’s character will be used to skewer the greed and irresponsibility of modern media.

The MTV Movie Awards are good for two things: pouring slime on people and premiering footage from highly anticipated, forthcoming movies. Plus, one of those things is done by the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards, so you do the math. Fortunately, there’s no difficult math involved in this amazing Dark Knight Rises footage that came as part of the Twilight/Hunger Games worshiping ceremony. It features a difficult conversation between Anne Hathaway‘s Catwoman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s policeman surrounded by explosive images, crowded fight scenes, and a dire warning. Check it out for yourself:

Two TV spots, new pictures, and banners from The Dark Knight Rises? What else could you ask for in about a day’s time? To make that month and a half wait we have left until the film finally opens a little more tolerable, there’s plenty to chew on and savor here. In usual Christopher Nolan cult fan fashion, it’ll be interesting to see how the fandom dissects the meaning of Joseph Gordon-Levitt “kneeling,” what secret Bruce Wayne and Miranda Tate are “talking” about, or what Selina Kyle is really looking at. These new pictures and posters (courtesy of Empire) don’t give us the answers we need, but some message boards out there will most likely come up with countless theories over the matter. First up, here’s a slew of gritty pics, all featuring nothing but gumdrop smiles and a much needed reminder of Nolan’s undying love for “happy” characters:

If you think about it, the Robocop remake actually has a lot going for it. Other than the baggage of being a remake. Director Jose Padilha has a successful action franchise in Elite Squad under his belt; co-writer James Vanderbilt wrote The Rundown, Zodiac and The Losers. co-writer Nick Schenk wrote Gran Torino; star Joel Kinnaman was fantastic in Snabba Cash/Easy Money and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It’s got some great names involved. Rising talent. But, you know, who needs a remake of Robocop? According to The Hollywood Reporter, an actor just made it even more interesting. Gary Oldman is joining the movie as the scientist who wrestles with his own sense of ethics when he finds himself in the middle of a big corporation’s needs and a former human’s humanity. There’s no denying the gravitas and intensity that Oldman brings to the project. It was already interesting, but it just got interesting.

What is Movie News After Dark? It doesn’t have time to explain it to you, yo. We just gotta get out of here, Mr. White! We begin this evening with the first image from the upcoming fifth and final season of Breaking Bad, courtesy of AMC. And guess what? It’s a shot of Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) standing in a field looking less than pleased with their surroundings. Even though it’s a shot we’ve seen a million times in four seasons, it never ceases to be interesting. 

In Lawless, John Hillcoat has almost crafted the perfect modern Western, infusing more explicitly the gangster genre elements that always occur in the genre, but never quite so explicitly. The film follows the Bondurant brothers – Jack (Shia Labeouf), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke) – rise as the most famous bootleggers in sun-dried Prohibition-era Virginia, and the government’s attempts to stop them. The government’s chief agent is Guy Pearce‘s Charlie Rakes, a flamboyant looking, but profoundly villainous Special Deputy, let off his leash when the Bondurants, lead by Hardy’s powerhouse Forrest refuse to pay a monthly toll on their illegal activities. While it may sound like an all guns-blazing, epic Prohibition-era Western, the story, adapted well from Matt Bondurant‘s historical novel by Nick Cave (who also once again offers a superlative score) focuses on human stories to add poignancy and depth to the more explosive sequences.

Along with Cole Abaius, I was quite taken with pure popcorn joy of The Avengers. Walking out of the theater one cannot imagine any blockbuster delivering a level of fun at that caliber. Plenty of moviegoers will come away this weekend thinking that exact sentiment, but then they’ll recall this fantastic final trailer for The Dark Knight Rises that will play before Joss Whedon‘s Marvel pic, and they’ll realize we still have one more superhero epic coming our way. If this eerie and evocative trailer is any indication, it’ll be the epic finale this series and the summer deserves. Take a look at Bruce Wayne “rising” with a far less laughable voice this time around:

Director John Hillcoat’s (The Road) upcoming project tells the tale of a family of Depression-era bootleggers coming under the scrutiny of a crooked and cutthroat authority. It’s adapted from a Matt Bondurant novel called “The Wettest County in the World,” it was once being referred to as The Wettest County, and for some reason it’s now called Lawless – but a movie with this cast by any other name would be just as badass. The film’s first theatrical trailer has hit the net today, thanks to Yahoo! Movies, and for the first time we’re getting a glimpse of just how much fun it is to see all of these actors working together; which is a whole lot of fun indeed. First off, you’ve got Shia LaBeouf, Jason Clarke, and Tom Hardy playing the Bondurant Boys, the bootlegging trio of brothers who are, at least in some way, based off the author of the source material’s real family history. Then you’ve got Gary Oldman playing the big-time crook they’re working for, Guy Pearce playing the corrupt authority figure brought in to make sure they’re either getting shut down or giving the government their required cut of the profits, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska playing a couple of ladies they become romantically entangled with, and a whole host of grizzled-looking character actors filling out the rest of the cast of backwoods Virginia hillbillies.

Albert Hughes‘s next film (sorry, Akira remake that I pray to God never happens), Motor City, has been spinning its wheels for months now, mainly because it’s been unable to hold on to a leading man. The film has had a number of hot names attached to it for its male lead – including Dominic Cooper, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeremy Renner, and Chris Evans – but none of them has stuck, with scheduling conflicts often to blame. The film is a somewhat interesting one, a sort of standard issue revenge story that could be spiced with some stylistic flash and a solid cast, and it centers on a recently-released criminal who goes after the people who put him in the big house. With Cooper, Gyllenhaal, Renner, and Evans all of the table, Variety now reports that Gerard Butler is in negotiations with Warner Bros. and Dark Castle to star in the film. He would star alongside Amber Heard (who has managed to stay attached the film through other casting woes) and Gary Oldman (the principal villain). While he’s a bit older than Cooper and Gyllenhaal, Butler certainly has the grit and brawn to bring a revenge-set criminal to life, so let’s hope this latest casting works out.

Once upon a time Warner Bros. was pretty gung-ho about putting together a new version of the King Arthur story. They tried to develop an Excalibur remake with director Bryan Singer, they paired Guy Ritchie up with Trainspotting writer John Hodge for another take, and they bought David Dobkin’s script Arthur & Lancelot for a cool $2m. Dobkin’s version came pretty close to getting made, and had Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington all ready to play Arthur and The Killings’ Joel Kinnaman set to be Lancelot, but ultimately things fell apart. In trying economic times, the film’s proposed $130m budget was deemed just too much to risk, especially with a couple of actors who hadn’t been proven on the big screen stuck in the lead roles. After the deal with Warner fell apart, Dobkin was free to once again shop his script around town, but nothing much came of his efforts. That’s reportedly changed, however. According to Deadline Malahide, Colin Farrell is now interested in the film, which gives it considerably more star power than it ever had before, and which has rekindled interest on the part of  Warner Bros. If the project gets back on track Farrell would be playing Lancelot, which is considered to likely be the breakout role of the film. There’s no word on who they would be looking at to play Arthur (get Brendan Gleeson!), but Deadline does claim to have knowledge that Gary Oldman will be re-approached to play Merlin, a role he initially