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• Bill Paxton is in talks to join Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in the sci-fi thriller All You Need Is Kill, playing the head of a platoon of soldiers that includes a man (Cruise) who re-lives the day he dies over and over again — so, Groundhog Day, but with aliens. (Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s based on a Japanese graphic novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.) Doug Liman (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) is directing from a script by Dante Harper (the upcoming Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters) and Joby Harold (Awake). [Variety]
• Melissa Leo will costar with Hugh Jackman in Prisoners, about a man who struggles to find his kidnapped daughter and best friend in spite of the police’s inability to help. Denis Villeneuve (Incendies) is attached to direct from a script by Aaron Guzikowski (Contraband). [Variety]
• Gong Li (Memoirs of a Geisha) will star in The Last Empress, a U.S.-China co-production about the infamous Empress Dowager Cixi, who ruled China from 1861 through 1908. No director has been announced. [Variety]
• Taryn Manning (Hustle & Flow, FX’s Sons of Anarchy) will star in The Shallows, a thriller about a group of friends who fight to survive in the wilds of the Florida Everglades. Rupert Smith will direct. [Variety]
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In Why Stop Now (titled Predisposed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival), Jesse Eisenberg plays Eli, a promising concert pianist whose career rests on a single audition, which happens to fall on the same day he needs to drop off his drug addicted mother, Penny (Melissa Leo), at rehab. Things don’t quite unfold as planned, and her main drug dealer, Sprinkles (Tracy Morgan), and his associate, Black (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), get involved.
