Casting: Pinkville, Avatar, Quarantined, Harry Potter 6

There are a lot of casting updates tonight, however, very few of them could be considered interesting. But as of 11:30pm on the West Coast, the news forecast for Monday is looking slow... So we're going to run with it.

Jay Hernandez, Jennifer Carpenter and Columbus Short have joined Johnathon Schaech and Steve Harris in Screen Gems' remake of remake of the Spanish horror movie Rec. John Erick Dowdle's Quarantined follows a reporter and her cameraman who are among those trapped inside a downtown Los Angeles apartment building where a deadly strain of rabies has broken out. Sounds interesting, but Screen Gems has a long record of horrible films (which I find ironic because the company is named "Screen Gems"). [thr]

Helen McCrory, who was originally cast as Bellatrix Lestrange in the last Harry Potter movie (she had to bow out due to a pregnancy), is now set to play Narcissa Malfoy, sister of Bellatrix Lesrange, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. [bbc]Matt Gerald (S.W.A.T, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) has been cast as the lead villain in James Cameron's 3D sci-fi epic action film Avatar. Gerald will begin filming this month in New Zealand and Los Angeles. [variety]

Rapper turned actor Xzibit (Gridiron Gang, Derailed) joins Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum and Woody Harrelson in Oliver Stone's Pinkville, about the 1968 My Lai Massacre, in which more than 500 people were killed by U.S. soldiers. Xzibit will play one of the soldiers. Mikko Alanne wrote the script. Production is set to begin next year. [THR]