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Amanda Seyfried may soon be joining Seth MacFarlane’s wild west show.
The Ted filmmaker, Family Guy creator and soon-to-be Oscar host will be shooting (so to speak) the gunslinging comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West later this spring, and Seyfried is in talks to play the girl who dumps his timid pioneer farmer.
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• Joel McHale, Robin Williams, and Lauren Graham have signed on star in the new holiday comedy A Friggin’ Christmas Miracle. Lorelai Gilmore and Jeff Winger will play a married couple forced to spend Christmas with their crazy extended family. On Christmas Eve, Boyd (McHale) realizes he forgot to bring his son’s gifts and embarks on an eight-hour road trip with his father (Williams) to retrieve them before his son wakes up. British director Tristram Shapeero, best known for directing television shows like Community and New Girl, will make his feature film debut directing the project. [THR]
• Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage is set to star in A Long Way Home, described as an “epic adventure about friendship, courage, magic, adventure and the lengths one boy will go to reunite his family.” Production designer Paki Smith (set decorator on The Dark Knight Rises and Batman Begins) will direct the project. [Variety]
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• Kristen Stewart and Elizabeth Banks have signed on to star in the upcoming film The Big Shoe. Directed by Steven Shainberg (Secretary), the film is about a brilliant shoe designer (Jim Sturgess) whose mother (Susan Sarandon) wants him to get into the lucrative knock-off business. When he tries to go off on his own, she hires a “muse” (Stewart) and a therapist (Banks) to try to convince him to do her bidding. [THR]
• Anna Faris is set to star in Ellen Page’s directorial debut Miss Stevens about a depressed teacher forced to chaperone a group of high school students on a trip to a state drama competition. Miss Stevens will apparently discover her own self-worth over the course of the weekend thanks to her students, making it sound like it could be a huge departure from the types of comedies Faris generally stars in. [THR]
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• The Godzilla reboot may not have a final script yet, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t continuing to move forward on other fronts. Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are reportedly in talks for the film, though no final decisions will be made till the script is set. Cranston has been popping up in smaller film roles recently, including Argo, while he shoots Breaking Bad, but it’s likely that he’ll start taking on more leading roles after this final season. [Variety]
• Doctor Who fans, get excited: Matt Smith has been confirmed to star in Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut How to Catch a Monster. The film is being described as a fantasy, and follows a single mother and her teenage son into a dark underworld. Christina Hendricks (who co-starred with Gosling in Drive) and Eva Mendes (Gosling’s love interest in the upcoming The Place Beyond the Pines) have been confirmed to star in the film as well. [Variety]
• Sean Bean (Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings) has signed on to star in Lana and Andy Wachowski’s next film, Jupiter Ascending as “a Han Solo-type.” The English actor will join Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, and Eddie Redmayne in the film, reportedly about galaxies, a bounty hunter, a toilet-scrubbing Russian immigrant (Kunis), and DNA. [Deadline]
• [UPDATED] Paul Walker (The Fast and the Furious) has been tapped to star as the cloned super-assassin Agent 47 in a reboot of 2007′s Hitman. Skip Woods, who wrote the screenplay for Hitman (based on the video game), will be responsible for writing this film as well. Commercial director Aleksander Bach is set to direct Agent 47, which will shoot this summer in Berlin and Singapore. [Deadline]
• [UPDATED] Michael Keaton has been confirmed to join the new DreamWorks film, Need for Speed alongside Aaron Paul, Kid Cudi, and Dominic Cooper. Based on the video game of the same name, the film follows a street racer forced to go on the run. Keaton “will play the reclusive and eccentric host of an underground supercar race where he invites the best drivers from around the world.” [THR]
• Like Crazy actress Felicity Jones will join James Franco and Jonah Hill in True Story, an adaptation of New York Times Magazine contributor Michael Finkel’s memoir – a strange In Cold Blood-style tale. After being fired from the magazine for creating a false, composite character for a story, Finkel (Hill) begins to investigate Christian Longo (Franco), a man wanted for allegedly killing his family, who’d also taken on a new name and identity: Michael Finkel. [Deadline]
Chris Pratt’s career is about to soar out of this world — or, more accurately, out of this galaxy.
EW has confirmed that the Parks and Recreation funnyman will play the lead character in Marvel’s upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy, a key part of Marvel’s Phase Two plan. Deadline first reported the news.
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• Last time we checked on the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel Dark Places, Amy Adams was in talks to star, but the latest news is that Adams has fallen out and Charlize Theron is interested in the role. Flynn said of Adams last June that she “couldn’t dream of someone more fantastic.” Even though we had been looking forward to seeing Adams in the adaptation, Charlize seems like a perfect alternate for the character of Libby Day. [Deadline]
• Colin Farrell is in talks to join Anthony Hopkins in the supernatural thriller Solace, about an FBI agent who enlists the help of a retired doctor to help him solve a series of murders. Farrell will not, however, be playing the agent — he’ll be the serial killer. Brazilian filmmaker Alfonso Poyart (2 Rabbits) is set to direct the project. [Deadline]
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• Sherlock fans, get excited: Benedict Cumberbatch is circling the role of Alan Turing in The Imitation Game – the well-regarded Black List script from Graham Moore. Alan Turing was a British logician and mathematician who made major contributions to the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, and cryptology. His efforts and inventions proved especially useful in breaking Axis codes during WWII, but after the war, Turing faced criminal prosecution for being gay and later committed suicide. Leonardo DiCaprio was previously attached to the role, but backed out this past fall. [Deadline]
• Revenge’s Emily VanCamp is currently in talks to star opposite Chris Evans in Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. VanCamp has mostly been known for her work on television, including the aforementioned Revenge, Brothers & Sisters, and Everwood. Making the jump to the big screen in such a high-profile project could prove to be a turning point in her career. [Deadline]
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• Jim Carrey has signed on to star in the upcoming comedy heist film, Loomis Fargo. Inspired by true events, the press release announcing the news says the story follows a disgruntled bank employee who teams up with a girl to steal nearly $20 million. The film will be directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and based on an original screenplay by Emily Spivey (Up All Night).
• Jeremy Renner will produce and star in the upcoming thriller Kill the Messenger, based on the true story of journalist Gary Webb. The Pulitzer Prize winner was known for uncovering the CIA’s involvement in cocaine trafficking during the Reagan Administration as a method of funding the Contra war in Nicaragua. Webb published his findings in a series of articles in 1996 in the San Jose Mercury News, and endured intense public scrutiny in the years that followed, before taking his own life in 2004. Michael Cuesta (Homeland) is set to direct the film. [THR]
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• Warner Bros. has acquired The Man From Primrose Lane with the intent of developing it into a feature for Bradley Cooper. Chad Feehan (Paranormal Activity 4) will write the screenplay based on James Renner’s novel about a true crime writer who decides to investigate the mysterious murder of a mitten-wearing, West Akron, Ohio recluse. [Deadline]
• Bradley Cooper is also currently in discussions to re-team with Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) for his next project, tentatively called Chef and described as a “culinary comedy” about a disgraced Paris-based chef attempting to stage a comeback in London. Cooper can be seen alongside Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling in Cianfrance’s upcoming film The Place Beyond the Pines, out in theaters March 29. [Variety]
• Though they haven’t even begun work on Animal Rescue yet, Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace are currently in talks join Daniel Espinosa’s (Safe House) adaptation of the thriller Child 44. Set in Stalin’s Soviet Union and based on Tom Rob Smith’s novel — the first in a trilogy — is about a devoted war hero whose faith in the system is shaken when he is forced to investigate the death of a child. [The Wrap]
• Charlize Theron is in talks to star in Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West, which has been described as a broad comedy in the vein of Blazing Saddles. As his first feature after Ted, MacFarlane is not only co-writing and directing the film — he’ll also star. [THR]
