What is Casting Couch? It’s the casting column that lives on because Kate Erbland was goodly enough to step in and keep it going for a couple days. Let’s all thank Kate. Thanks, Kate.
Usually when movies are already filmed it means that their casting process has been completed. Not so for a Robert Rodriguez film, though. This guy does pretty much every job on his sets and relies on studio assistance for very little, which allows him to play by his own rules and march to the beat of his own drummer. Sometimes that opportunity for flexibility can result in movies that feel like they’ve been slapped together by a madman, but sometimes it leads to a movie being able to make amazing last minute additions, like how his in-production Sin City sequel just added Ray Liotta, Juno Temple, and Jeremy Piven to its already-stacked cast. Indiewire isn’t sure which characters they’re going to be playing, but probably that doesn’t matter much. Liotta and Piven always just play themselves, and Temple, well…she can do anything she wants.
Mathieu Amalric
Roman Polanski is making a movie in France and one of the French guys in it is being replaced by another French guy. Or, at least, that’s how Deadline’s story first sounded to my ugly American ears. Further reading revealed that the new French guy is actually someone we know, however. The movie is called Venus in Fur, and the news is that Louis Garrel has been replaced as its lead by Quantum of Solace bad guy and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly star Mathieu Amalric. This one will see Amalric re-teaming with his Diving Bell co-star, and Polanski’s wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, which adds an additional creepy layer to the fact that this is a movie about a domineering director who forces his actors into kinky role play. Yuck.
Ewan McGregor
Justin Kurzel, the guy who directed The Snowtown Murders, has been trying to put together an adaptation of John Le Carre’s “Our Kind of Traitor” for a while—probably ever since the last time someone adapted a Le Carre novel to the big screen and they ended up creating the successful and fairly awesome Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Despite Tinker Tailor’s success, things have been slow-going for Kurzel, but they’re now likely to pick up speed as the Daily Mail [via Indiewire] is reporting that he’s just found a name actor to serve as his lead. How big of a name? Ewan McGregor big. We’ve heard casting rumors about this project before, but apparently those deals either didn’t pan out or are still ongoing. McGregor, though, he’s in.
Kate Winslet
Also in the Daily Mail article that name drops McGregor is some big Kate Winslet news. Apparently Alan “Hans F’n Gruber” Rickman has been trying to put together a movie about gardening for some time now. That may sound boring, but there’s more to it. The script, called A Little Chaos, is actually about two rival gardeners who are both commissioned by Louis XIV to create a fountain at Versailles and end up falling in love. You see? Everyone’s girlfriend is going to make them go see that, so you can understand Rickman’s interest. The news here is that the movie is finally coming together and Rickman has finally found his two gardeners. Who has he recruited? Rust and Bone’s Matthias Schoenaerts and Movie 43’s Winslet. Not bad, Hans, that’s something of a casting coup.