- Danny Trejo revealed that Zoe Saldana will appear in Machete Kills.
- Maya Rudolph and Rob Corddry will join Steve Carell, Allison Janney, Sam Rockwell, Toni Collette, Liam James, and AnnaSophia Robb in the dramedy, The Way, Way Back. Oscar-winning screenwriters for The Descendants, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash are writing and directing the new film about a teenage boy comes into his own over the course of a summer through an unlikely relationship with the man in charge of the local water park. [Via]
- Relativity Media has announced two new action-humor projects they are co-funding with Luc Besson‘s EuropaCorp. The first, Malavita, is adapted and directed by Besson from the book Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista. Robert DeNiro will star in the story of the Manzonis, a notorious mafia family who gets relocated to France under the witness protection program. The second project, Three Days To Kill, written by Besson and Adi Hasak is “about Secret Service Agent Ethan Runner who discovers he’s dying and decides to retire in order to reconnect with his estranged family but is offered access to an experimental drug that could save his life but has hallucinatory side-effects.”
- Seth Gordon‘s Identity Thief, a caper comedy about a successful, milquetoast family man whose life is ruined when a women steals his identity, continues to finalize it’s cast. Eric Stonestreet, Morris Chestnut,T.I, Amanda Peet, John Cho, Jon Favreau and Genesis Rodriguez are all slated to co-star opposite leads Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy.
- Dwayne Johnson has confirmed that the postponed G.I. Joe: Retaliation will be shooting new material in addition to converting the film to 3D. Comic Book Movie claims that part of the extended post production is so producers can pursue Joseph Gordon-Levitt to reprise his role as Cobra Commander.
- Peter Segal might be directing Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant‘s screenplay The Machine with Vin Diesel starring. Diesel would play, “a human-like machine created in secrecy by the Pentagon as the world’s first true ultimate weapon. Two decades after the government halted the project for unknown reasons, a child finds and befriends “The Machine.”
- Harry Potter‘s resident ginger Rupert Grint has lined up two roles. In CBGB, Grint will play Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys, who played a prominent role during the club’s rise and impact on the underground music scene opposite former co-star Alan Rickman who portrays CBGB owner Hilly Kristal. He’ll also co-star in The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman which stars Shia LaBeouf as a normal guy who falls for a woman (Evan Rachel Wood) who’s been claimed by a violent crime boss.
- Brett Ratner has teamed with South Korea-based CJ Entertainment to develop The Golden Age, an East-meets-West buddy action adventure franchise. Ratner will likely helm the first film, The Golden Age: The Lost Treasure of Zheng, which “focuses on a “British puzzle expert, a worldly Chinese police officer and a mysterious Chinese female pirate who must work together to find China’s greatest hidden treasures.”
- SNL cast member Taran Killam has taken a dramatic role in Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years A Slave, opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt and Paul Dano. ‘Killam will play a traveling showman who abducts a free black man (Ejiofor) and brings him South, where he is sold into slavery and endures a brutal 12 years.”
