What is Casting Couch? It’s full of casting news! Read on to find out what Charlize Theron is up to. Sean Bean was already a star on the rise before he took one of the lead roles in HBO’s Game of Thrones, but since then he’s reached a whole new level of stardom that led to the spawning of a “Sean Bean dies in everything” meme here on the Internet. That’s how you know you’ve arrived. Makes sense, then, that he should finally get the chance to be one of the promoted names in a big-budget tentpole film and see how it works out. According to Deadline, makers of epic film Lana and Andy Wachowski have just signed Bean to play the Han Solo-type for their next big project, Jupiter Ascending. He joins Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, and Eddie Redmayne in a cast that’s starting to look like the strongest the Wachowskis have ever worked with.

What is Casting Couch? It’s the casting column that has updates on the careers of some promising young talent. And Matthias Schoenaerts. Josh Hutcherson is one of the hottest young actors in the business right now, but when you first hear that he’s negotiating to star in a movie about Pablo Escobar, it sounds a little confusing. Never fear though, because Deadline has an explanation. Paradise Lost is the movie about Escobar that’s being written and directed by Life of Pi actor Andrea di Stefano and is starring Benicio Del Toro as the infamous drug lord. The reason that Hutcherson is said to be negotiating for the lead role is because, while Del Toro gets to do the showy stuff as Escobar, Hutcherson’s character is the one whose eyes we see the story through. If he signs on he’ll be playing an Irish surfer who falls in love with Escobar’s niece and then has to meet her murdering, drug-dealing uncle. Colombia sounds fun.

There’s good reason to believe that Channing Tatum‘s starring in The Wachowski‘s Jupiter Ascending won’t make it completely dull. According to MTV, the actor is confirmed for the role, but where this might have been bad news a year ago (a massive original sci-fi work from directors who made an indelible mark on the genre teaming with a “star” being hoisted upon us all), there’s hope now. Why? Because Tatum’s turn in 21 Jump Street helped to prove he had a personality beyond what blockbuster blandness was forced into the grinder. Plus, the Wachowskis took Keanu Reeves (the king of soporific acting) and made him into an iconic character). Plus, Magic Mike might do a lot to show off a glittery body butter-coated version of Tatum’s personality as well. In the forthcoming Jupiter, Tatum will play an alien of incredible intelligence sent to kill a character played by Mila Kunis. Unsurprisingly, he’s unable to kill her because, come on. Seriously. Could you? Instead, he falls in love. Most likely, bad things ensue. Hopefully a dance battle.

Hold your pitchforks back for but a moment, dear readers, as I confess that my interest level in Lana and Andy Wachowski‘s next project, Cloud Atlas, is minimal. While I am confident that the Wachowskis, along with co-director Tom Tykwer, will be able to turn a massive tome into something fluid and cohesive, I’ve been unable to rouse much emotion to the project beyond that. Much as I’d like to be proven wrong, I’m still much more excited about the siblings’ next project – an original sci-fi film called Jupiter Ascending that we’ve known about since October. While we still don’t know anything about the plot beyond just those slim details, it looks like we may soon be able to picture a starring pair in the lead roles – Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis.

Back in October, word first broke about the Wachowski siblings‘s upcoming sci-fi epic, Jupiter Ascending. It’s apparently the next project they’ll work on after they finish up their adaptation of Cloud Atlas, and while not much is known about the specifics, it’s said to be a concept with serious franchise potential. As everyone knows, the best way to launch a franchise is to cast big actors in your lead roles. You can come up with all of the revolutionary ideas and breakthrough filmmaking techniques in the world and there is no guarantee that anyone will ever see what you’ve done, but if you stick Will Smith in the middle of all your hard work, success is pretty much a guarantee. To that end, the Wachowskis want to start their casting process off by locking up Natalie Portman. According to a report from 24 Frames, the Black Swan actress is being actively recruited by the Wachowskis’s people, and so far she’s shown quite a bit of interest in taking the role. The big potential of this casting is that this would be the first acting job Portman would be taking after her gigantic, career-making Oscar win for her work in Black Swan. A new baby forced her into a sort of acting hiatus, and this would be her first chance to follow up the great work she did in that film.

With the Wachowski siblings in the midst of filming segments of the massive Cloud Atlas adaptation, it looks as if Andy and Lana are ready to jump back into the Hollywood machine in a big way. Warner Bros. is reportedly setting up a new project for the pair (unfortunately, not their long-discussed hard-R Iraq War homosexual romance drama) that will see them back on a familiar ground. The new film is called Jupiter Ascending, and while little is known about the project, we do know that it is an original sci-fi idea from the pair, and that the studio is already ringing the “franchise” bell. They are looking for a spring production start, which means that the buzz now revolves around finding an A-list star to lead the project. The Wachowskis’ previous original sci-fi franchise, The Matrix, was not only a huge financial and popular success (making a staggering $1.6b worldwide), but the first film is also one of the best-rated and reviewed sci-fi films of the past couple of decades. We won’t talk about Reloaded and Revolutions here (not a fan). But what the franchise proved was that the Wachowskis are adept at conceiving of and executing a large-scale sci-fi concept that can appeal to both critics and moviegoers. If Jupiter Ascending is of the same mold, everyone is in for a treat. Now, if we could just get a logline on the project (I’m already picturing an epic battle between the actual planet of Jupiter and everyone else