Posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 by Angie Han
With the uber-successful Twilight film series due to end next November, Hollywood is turning its attention that other Stephenie Meyer adaptation, the sci-fi romance The Host. In Time writer/director Andrew Niccol boarded the project earlier this year with Saoirse Ronan set to star, and now a group of young up-and-comers are getting ready to compete for the two male leads.
Liam Hemsworth (The Last Song), Kit Harrington (Game of Thrones), Jai Courtney (Spartacus: Blood and Sand), and Max Irons (Red Riding Hood) are set to test for a character named Jared, while Dane DeHaan (The Place Beyond the Pines), Thomas McDonnell (Prom), Augustus Prew (Charlie St. Cloud), and Jake Abel (The Lovely Bones) will test for the part of Ian. More details after the jump.
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I’d like to make this the ‘leading lady’ edition of Casting Bits, but I don’t think Caleb Landry Jones would like that very much. (Jason Segel would probably be OK with it.) Still, after the break you’ll find that two films have chosen their lead actresses, while Jones joins Jordan. Ahem. To wit:
- Alexandra Maria Lara (above) takes the (female) lead in Ron Howard’s racing movie Rush,
- Cody Horn will be the leading lady in Soderbergh’s Magic Mike,
- Caleb Landry Jones, aka the First Class version of Banshee, joins Neil Jordan’s Byzantium,
- and, as a final note, Jason Segel appears to be confirmed for Judd Apatow’s This is Forty.
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Posted on Tuesday, July 5th, 2011 by Angie Han
An international English-language trailer has dropped for Studio Ghibli‘s Arrietty, the directorial debut of animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi. The new spot features the UK voice cast, which includes Saoirse Ronan as Arrietty, Olivia Coleman, Tom Holland, and Mark Strong.
Based on Mary Norton‘s classic children’s series The Borrowers, the film revolves around a 14-year-old girl named Arrietty Clock, who is one of a group of tiny people who secretly reside in the homes of regular-sized people and “borrow” supplies from them as needed. When Arrietty is discovered by a human boy, the two strike up a friendship that has big repercussions for the Clocks’ lives. Watch the trailer after the jump.
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We’ve got a handful of release dates to share, with the biggest possibly being Guillermo del Toro‘s upcoming Pacific Rim, which, if things go well, will begin shooting late this summer or in early fall. Warner Bros. will distribute the Legendary Pictures production, and has just set July 12, 2013 as the release date. Pacific Rim is scripted by Travis Beacham and already boasts Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba and Charlie Day in the cast. The story is “set in a future where giant malevolent creatures threaten to destroy the earth, and the planet must band together and use advanced weapons technology to eradicate the growing threat.” [THR]
After the break, a new date for Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, and dates for the Stephenie Meyer adaptation The Host, as well as for Roman Polanski’s Carnage, Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In, and Tucker & Dale Vs Evil. Read More »
After taking a break to make the kick-ass action flick Hanna, Joe Wright is back to his classically literary tricks. The director of Pride and Prejudice and Atonement will return to costumed drama for his next film, a star-studded adaptation of Leo Tolstoy‘s classic novel Anna Karenina. Already cast are Keira Knightley as the title character, Jude Law as her older husband and Aaron Johnson as her younger love. Wright is rounding out his ensemble with a solid list of names such as Saoirse Ronan, Kelly Macdonald, Olivia Williams, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson and Andrea Riseborough. Read who each will be playing after the break. Read More »
Is Saoirse Ronan the latest young talent to be cloned so that she can be attached to many projects at once? That appears to be the case. She’s already scheduled for The Host, may be in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina and Emma Thompson’s Effie, and the latest is a film called Byzantium, a ‘mother-daughter’ vampire tale co-starring Gemma Arterton that Neil Jordan will direct. Read More »
Peter Jackson is shooting The Hobbit in New Zealand right now, and today Sir Ian McKellen has confirmed a long-standing cast rumor: Hugo Weaving will indeed be seen in the film(s) as the elf lord Elrond. More info on that after the break, along with the final confirmation that Saoirse Ronan won’t make it to Middle-Earth after all. Read More »
You may not realize that Twilight author Stephenie Meyer wrote another novel that sounds far crazier than her sparkly vampire series, but The Host is exactly that novel. The 2008 tale seems like a riff on Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (and several other stories) as it describes altruistic alien parasites called Souls (seriously) that attach themselves to host bodies — in this case humans — and then make their society all great and stuff. Imagine the monolith from 2001, but far more active, and you’re probably on the right track.
The book was optioned some time ago and has been developed as an indie with Stephenie Meyer offering a lot of input. Scripting is Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Now). He was once set to direct, and likely will in fact make the film. When he does, it looks like he’ll have Saoirse Ronan in the central role of a girl who rejects the probing tendrils of her own personal alien parasite. Read More »
