What is Casting Couch? Your daily dose of casting news. Today we’ve got a new job for Viola Davis as well as word on who the next actor to mutate for Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past will be.
According to Heat Vision, Robert De Niro and Shia LaBeouf are both in negotiations to take the starring roles in an upcoming espionage thriller called Spy’s Kid. That’s, Spy’s Kid, not Spy Kids, which is something totally different. What’s this one about? It’s based on the true story of a CIA operative named Jim Nicholson who was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 23 years in prison, but who kept the family business alive by teaching his son how to ply his trade from jail. Shady deals with Russian operatives followed. Alongside De Niro and LaBeouf negotiating to star, LaBeouf’s Disturbia director DJ Caruso is also negotiating to direct, and whether the whole package comes together or not is said to hinge largely on if the script that eventually gets written is any good. No writer has yet been hired.
Rose Byrne
What is Tumbledown? It’s a new comedy written by newcomer Desi Van Til and directed by newcomer Sean Menshaw that, despite its creators’ inexperience, has already gathered together a pretty impressive cast full of familiar names. The film will star Rose Byrne as a young widow who falls for a NYC writer (Jason Sudeikis) who comes to her sleepy little town in order to investigate the death of her recently departed, famous folk singer husband. Sound more creepy than funny? Well, the film is also said to be featuring supporting performances from Olivia Munn, Joe Manganiello, Blythe Danner, Michael McKean, and Beau Bridges, so chances are they’ll be able to bring the laughs, no matter how uncomfortable the inappropriate romance gets. [Deadline]
Eva Green
The Salvation, a revenge tale set in 1870s America from Danish director Kristian Levring, not only stars Levring’s fellow Danish countryman Mads Mikkelsen in its lead role, but it’s now also said to feature a rather impressive and impressively multi-national supporting cast. The scoop comes from THR, who reports that Levring has recruited French star Eva Green, American actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Michael Raymond-James, Britain’s Jonathan Pryce, Sweden’s Mikael Persbrandt, Scotland’s Douglas Henshall, and soccer star-turned-actor Eric Cantona all to appear in the film, which is currently filming in South Africa, and is sure to feature tons of violent murder as well as tons of crazy accents.
Anna Kendrick
Seeing as The Voices is a psychological thriller starring Ryan Reynolds, you might not at first think that it sounds very interesting. But once you hear its premise, that of a worker in a bathtub factory who pines for a woman in the facility’s accounting department seeing his sought-after relationship finally start to develop after his evil cat and his benevolent dog start talking to him, you can’t help but have your interest piqued. And after Deadline’s scoop that the film is now going to co-star Anna Kendrick and Gemma Arterton, you almost stop caring that watching it means that you’re going to have to sit through another lead performance from Ryan Reynolds at all. That Anna Kendrick, she’s nothing to sneeze at.
Viola Davis
Michael Mann’s next film is said to be a thriller about cyber-crime that’s set to begin filming in China next month, and though a synopsis like that initially makes you think of a whole host of forgotten movie snoozers that came out in the mid-’90s, the cast that the veteran director is putting together makes it hard to feel anything less than excited about this 20 years too late revisiting of The Net. We already knew that the film was going to star Thor star Chris Hemsworth, and now a report from Deadline is claiming that the picture will also feature The Help star Viola Davis. If there’s anyone who can make sitting in front of the glow of a computer screen and worrying about hackers seem exciting, chances are it’s Viola Davis.
Adan Canto
Who’s the latest actor to join Bryan Singer’s upcoming bridging of Fox’s mutant universes, X-Men: Days of Future past? If his tweets are to be believed, it’s Mexican actor Adan Canto (The Following). Canto posted a picture of himself, Singer, Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart, and Shawn Ashmore all wearing matching Montreal Canadiens jerseys along with the caption, “Thrilled to be X-Men!” Given that this likely means Canto is the latest member of the mutant team, one can’t help but wonder which member he’s going to be playing.
Well, seeing as another of his tweets teased that during his next project, he might, “turn into a ball of fire if someone pisses me off,” many people have speculated that he might be playing Brazilian mutant Roberto da Costa, AKA Sunspot. Why the connection? Because Sunspot is a brown dude with fire powers, duh. Perhaps all of this racial profiling is a little premature and we should wait a bit before closing the book on this particular mystery though.