What is Casting Couch? It’s your handy one stop destination for news about what all of your favorite and least favorite actors are up to next. Today we’ve got news about Anne Hathaway’s latest excuse to sing and what Adam Sandler’s next excuse to get paid to go on vacation with a beautiful actress will be.
When James Marsden first caught international attention, it was as the stone-faced and charisma-free Cyclops in Bryan Singer’s first X-Men movie. People didn’t have much love for him back then. But since then he’s shown in things like Enchanted and Death at a Funeral that he’s not so bad when he’s letting his figurative hair down and getting a little goofy. That’s a good thing, because now we don’t have to meet Deadline’s report that he’s just become the latest name to join the Anchorman 2 cast with annoyed groans. Apparently Marsden will be playing Ron Burgundy’s rival news anchor, which sounds like quite a bit of fun, because Marsden can do smug pretty well.
Megan Fox
The last time we heard about Michael Bay’s dumb-sounding Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, it was delayed indefinitely because it had some serious script issues. This was a good thing, because even though Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles isn’t a sacred cow or anything, it does have its fans, and nobody wants to see a dink like Michael Bay ruin it. Well, good news over, because Variety is reporting that not only is the film going forward again, but that Michael Bay has also apparently patched things up with his dead-eyed Transformers nemesis Megan Fox and cast her in the film as April O’Neil. And you thought being re-imagined as aliens instead of mutants was the worst thing that could happen to the Ninja Turtles.
Askel Hennie
The upcoming live-action Hercules that’s in development has looked like a mixed bag up to this point. That’s because it’s going to be starring Dwayne Johnson, who’s awesome, but it’s also going to be directed by Brett Ratner, who isn’t. The scales have just been tipped in favor of the optimists though, because Heat Vision is reporting that Aksel Hennie, who was great in the recent and completely awesome Norwegian thriller Headhunters, has just joined the cast as well. Hennie will reportedly be playing Tydeus, a character who fights with two axes and is such a madman that he has to be chained up while everyone is sleeping. This, of course, sounds badass. You’ve won this round, Ratner.
Jesse Eisenberg
Fox has announced the voice cast for their upcoming sequel to their animated bird movie Rio [via ComingSoon], and turns out it’s packed full of big name actors looking to score a good pay day for an easy day’s worth of work. Returning from the first film will be familiar voices like Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, Jemaine Clement, will.i.am, Tracy Morgan, George Lopez, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro, Bebel Gilberto, Jake T. Austin, and Jamie Foxx… *takes breath* …and new to the franchise are Andy Garcia, Bruno Mars, Kristin Chenoweth, Rita Moreno, Amandla Stenberg, Rachel Crow, Pierce Gagnon, and Natalie Morales. The plot of the film is that the birds from the original have decided that their kids are lazy city birds, so they take them out to the Amazon to show them what the real world is like. When wife and kids too quickly take to life in the country though, Eisenberg’s Blu starts to fear that he might be growing apart from his family. Oh that Jesse Eisenberg, so neurotic.
Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway is getting a lot of attention for her singing in Les Misérables. Heck, chances are pretty good that Sunday she’s going to be getting a Best Supportig Actress Oscar for it. So it’s probably not very surprising to hear that her next project will give her the chance to show off her multi-talents as well. The Daily Mail is reporting that she’s going to star opposite British musician Johnny Flynn in a movie called Song One. She’ll be playing an archeologist who falls in love with a rock star, and the reason she’ll be doing some singing is that Johnathan Rice and Jenny Lewis have written some music for Flynn’s rock star character to perform in the movie, and apparently they’ve been told to write a number specifically for Hathaway as well. Reports that they were actually ordered to write a song for Hathaway, while Hathaway had them at gunpoint, are empty rumors started by me just now.
Adam Sandler
It’s become pretty apparent that the first thing Adam Sandler looks for when picking new projects is their potential to have plenty of product placement shoe-horned into them. But, if there’s a second thing he looks for, it’s the chance to film in some sort of tropical location opposite a beautiful actress. Well, it sounds like he’s found a new movie to match all his criteria, because THR is reporting that he’s just been cast in an untitled comedy about a man and a woman who have only had one date getting trapped at a resort together with kids from their previous marriages in tow. You see, it sounds hilarious, because at first they don’t get along, but then they learn to like each other. How cute! Drew Barrymore is his rumored co-star. How cute!