What is Casting Couch? It’s starting to wonder how many times Hugh Jackman can play Wolverine before his sideburns start to stick that way.
Hot on the heels of the announcement that the original Professor X and Magneto, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, would be joining Bryan Singer’s X-Men: First Class sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past, comes word that yet another actor from the original X-Men trilogy, Hugh Jackman, is also negotiating. This makes sense, of course, because Jackman’s brief cameo in First Class was the first indication we got that Matthew Vaughn’s reboot and Singer’s original films might actually exist in the same universe. Now that Singer has Stewart, McKellen, and Jackman on board, the only other actors he needs to poach from those first X-Men movies is…well, no one. It’s kind of amazing how well those movies cast these three guys and how poorly they cast every single other character. Hopefully this is the end of the colliding of worlds. [THR]
Daniel Bruhl
Now that this big new X-Men movie is gearing up and is probably going to be taking a lot of precedence over at Fox, it’s time for everyone involved to start solidifying up their schedules and getting ready to work. Unfortunately for young Charles Xavier, James McAvoy, this means dropping out of a project he was previously attached to. Remember how McAvoy was supposed to play Daniel Domscheit-Berg alongside Benedict Cumberbatch’s Julian Assange in that upcoming Wikileaks movie? Well he’s not going to have time anymore, so THR is reporting that the film’s director, Bill Condon, has replaced him with Daniel Brühl (Inglorious Basterds). Oh well, at least they’ve still got Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch!
James Franco
Been wondering what James Franco is up to? Yeah, me too. The Wrap has a report that he’s the front-runner to star in an adaptation of the Marcus Sakey novel “Good People,” which is a crime thriller about a young couple who find a stack of cash in a dead neighbor’s house and then come to realize that that old saying Jesus or somebody came up with, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems,” is absolutely true. All it takes is nicking $400,000 that’s not yours, and it turns out you can get in trouble with some very bad people. Who knew? Danish director Henrik Genz is set to be the man in charge on this one.
Hailee Steinfeld
How about that promising young actress that broke out in True Grit, Hailee Steinfeld? Been wondering what she’s up to as well? Yeah, me too. Deadline has a report that she’s just joined ludicrously-named director McG’s latest project, Three Days to Kill. This one is an action movie that’s being produced by Luc Besson and that stars Kevin Costner as a soon-to-be-dead secret agent of some sort who attempts to complete one final mission as well as reconnect with his estranged daughter before kicking off. Seeing as the character is likely dying in three days, he’s also on some strange hallucinogenics that are meant to prolong his life, but that mostly just make him lose his grip on sanity. Sounds like a weird movie, especially for Costner. Steinfeld will presumably be playing the girl.
Charlize Theron
Ignoring the fact that subtitles exist and that most places where you can get movies have foreign films sections, Hollywood keeps looking overseas for movie ideas that could be given the English-language, big star treatment. The latest film to get thrown into their remake machine is the third in Korean director Park Chan-wook’s vengeance trilogy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Annapurna Pictures has just announced [via ComingSoon] that they’ve acquired the remake rights for the film, they’ve hired William Monahan (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) to come up with a script, and that Charlize Theron is going to star as a woman who gets wrongly imprisoned and then seeks revenge on everyone responsible for her woes once she gets out of the slammer. Beware her dainty, pretty lady rage.