Casting Notes: Additions To Battle: Los Angeles And Eat, Pray Love

It's a really slow news day (how can you follow Ridley Scott going back to Alien?) so here are a few small casting notes to chew on. First, appropriately, is the news that Billy Crudup has joined the adaptation of best-selling memoir Eat, Pray Love. Variety notes that he'll work alongside Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem and Richard Jenkins under the direction of Ryan Murphy. Crudup will play husband to Roberts' protagonist, who leaves him behind to undertake a global journey of self-discovery. The film goes before cameras next week.

Meanwhile, three actors have been added to the science fiction action flick Battle: Los Angeles, and they're all after the jump.

We've known for a while that Aaron Eckhart will topline Battle as the central Marine, but now we've got new names to fill out the roster alongside him: THR reports that Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Pena and Bridget Moynahan are all on board. This is one of those movies we'd love to see succeed: an original sci-fi action spec script seemingly inspired by stories of UFOs over LA during the early days of US involvement in WWII. But the Chris Bertolini script has been slammed online (reports suggest at least one rewrite has cleaned it up) and the resume of director Jonathan Liebesman (Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and Darkness Falls) has raised doubts. But what the hell, he's said he wants to make something like "Independence Day meets Black Hawk Down," so I'll wait and see what happens here.

Rodriguez will be a key player, as radio battalion Crpl. Adriana Santos. Moynahan plays a veterinarian and Pena plays the father of a boy found by Eckhart's marines. Liebesman is shooting the film in the fall; the plan has been to film in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which should make an interesting double for LA.