What is Casting Couch? News about actors finding ways to get paid. Today we’ve got word about a new job for that girl who cut up her face in Evil Dead as well as a possible comeback for Mischa Barton.
Perhaps you’ve heard of an actor named Robert De Niro. He’s the funny old guy in all of those Meet the Fockers movies. Ring a bell? Well, Deadline is reporting that he’s just signed on to appear in a boxing biopic called Hands of Stone that will focus on Roberto Duran and his rivalry with Sugar Ray Leonard as well as his relationship with his trainer, Ray Arcel (De Niro). Édgar Ramirez (Wrath of the Titans) is also on board the film in the Duran role, but there has yet to be any word on who might end up playing Sugar Ray Leonard. Didn’t I just read the Wesley Snipes got out of jail a couple of days ago? Is he old now?
Denis Leary
News out of Deadline is that Denis Leary is the latest name to join Ivan Reitman’s upcoming football movie Draft Day. The film will focus on the drama inherent in a football franchise trying to juggle a million different opinions and a million different possibilities in order to put together the perfect team on draft day, and it will star Leary and Kevin Costner as the warring coach and GM of the Cleveland Browns. Apparently Leary’s casting was an in-at-the-wire type thing, because the film needed to have its actors in place so it could film some footage at the real upcoming NFL draft that’s taking place on April 25. Neat anecdote, am I right?
Mekhi Phifer
With production beginning on the next big thing in the YA world, Divergent, one would think that the film’s casting process would have to be wrapped up, but Variety is reporting that director Neil Burger has made a couple of last minute additions before shooting. Apparently ER actor Mekhi Phifer has joined the film in an undisclosed role, and the curiously-named Maggie Q has signed on to play Tori, who is a member of the Dauntless faction. You see, the movie is set in a post-apocalyptic Chicago where all of the city’s population has been divided into five different factions and…oh heck, just read the book.
Jake Abel
The American Film Company, a production company that specializes in making movies that are based on real American stories, has announced [via ComingSoon] their next project. It’s a WWII pic about three Navy flyers who were forced to ditch their plane and got cast adrift on a little yellow raft in the Pacific Ocean back in 1942. The casting news regarding this survival tale is that Raising Hope’s Garret Dillahunt has been brought on board as pilot Harold Dixon, Harry Potter’s Tom Felton (Malfoy!) will be playing bombardier Tony Pastula, and The Host’s Jake Abel has been picked to portray radioman Gene Aldrich. The movie is apparently about heroics and never giving up and whatnot, so don’t expect any of these guys to end up eating each other on the raft.
Jessica Lucas
If your tastes run anywhere parallel to mine, while you were watching the new Evil Dead remake you spent most of the movie asking yourself, “Hey, who’s that dishy brown girl pretending like she’s a nurse?” Turns out that girl was an actress named Jessica Lucas, and Deadline is reporting that she’s just landed another gig. Her new job comes in the form of Paul W.S. Anderson’s Pompeii, which we’ve been talking a lot about in this column recently. Reportedly her character will be a slave/confidant to Emily Browning’s Flavia, because if you can’t trust your slaves to keep all of your secrets, then who can you trust?
Antje Traue
Don’t follow Brett Ratner on Twitter? Don’t worry, nobody blames you. But luckily someone over at ComingSoon does, because they were able to notice that the director broke the latest piece of casting news regarding his upcoming, Dwayne Johnson-starring action flick, Hercules. The tweet seems to have been deleted now, but at the time it reportedly intimated that Man of Steel actress Antje Traue was the latest name he had snagged to go questing with Herc. Does the tweet no longer existing mean that the deal with Trauje wasn’t actually quite done, or just that Ratner decided he didn’t really want to be one of those directors who makes casting announcements on Twitter? It appears we’ve got a mystery on our hands.
Mischa Barton
Mischa Barton used to be a thing, right? I vaguely remember hearing her name tossed around a bunch about a decade ago for something or other. Well, the time for her comeback may be nigh, because Variety is reporting that she’s just been hired to star in an indie drama called Fast Life. The film was written and will be directed by Rock Jacobs, a music video director who has done work for people like Vanessa Hudgens and Miranda Cosgrove, and it’s about an ad exec who falls in with an “unsavory fast money crowd,” but who then gets a wakeup call when he meets a young lady who is unimpressed with whatever an “unsavory fast money crowd” is. Barton will play the young woman, which should work out perfectly, because looking disinterested is definitely something we know she can do.