Film Casting: JURASSIC WORLD, Michael Cain in LAST WITCH HUNTER, & More

Jurassic World, The Last Witch Hunter, and other films have all made recent film casting, screenwriting, and director news. These films come from movie studios primarily based in the United States. The castings, screenwriters, and directors are subject to change.

The Messenger

Robert Sheehan (“The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones”), Jack Fox (“Dracula”) and Lily Cole (“Snow White and the Huntsman”) have joined the cast of “The Messenger

Tupperware Unsealed

Sony acquired author Bob Kealing’s non-fiction book Tupperware Unsealed for Sandra Bullock to star as the marketer extraordinaire behind the launch of Tupperware and its famous parties that made the storage product a household name and into the multi-billion company it still is today. Tate Taylor (The Help, Get On Up) will adapt, produce and direct this fun story about a divorcee from Detroit who convinced a plastics inventor to let her go crazy marketing a good product which, up until then, was getting little attention from consumers.

The story centers on Brownie Wise, the female marketing entrepreneur behind the rollout of the Tupperware brand and the reclusive Massachusetts inventor named Earl Tupper. The product was developed in the late 1940s but it wasn’t until Wise stepped in that the product really took off. Wise was as savvy a businesswoman as they come and, in fact, was the first female ever featured on the cover of Business Week magazine.

The story will focus on Wise’s start and include the clashes that she had with the company founder Tupper that led to her leaving the company. Tupper had hired Wise at his company in 1951 but there was friction between them after she started getting so much public attention for her nationwide Tupperware parties. He later fired her after other companies showed an interest in buying him out. Apparently Tupper believed that having a woman executive would make the company less attractive to corporate suitors. As projected sales headed to $100M, he sold the company for $16M and gave Wise an insulting pittance of only $35,000.

Captain Fantastic

Frank Langella has been set to star opposite Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic, the Matt Ross-directed drama that will start filming shortly in Albuquerque.

Mercy Road

Australian filmmaker Aaron Wilson has been set to direct Mercy Road, the Cheyenne Enterprises production that will be co-financed by DragonSlate Media…Written by Roy Freirich, Mercy Road is a character-driven action thriller inspired by real events. A small town sheriff loses his daughter to cancer, then discovers she was given counterfeit medication.

Overlook Hotel

Mark Romanek will direct Overlook Hotel, a Glen Mazzara-scripted prequel to Stephen King’s 1977 book The Shining, about the early days of the Overlook Hotel, glimpsed in the final scenes of the Stanley Kubrick-directed movie.

The Ring 3

Paramount has hired F. Javier Gutiérrez to direct the third movie in its The Ring series, marking the Spanish filmmaker’s second studio genre franchise after Relativity and The Weinstein Co. tapped him to reboot The Crow in another hotly contested helmer search.

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The Nest

Universal’s comedy The Nest has added actress Renée Elise Goldsberry in the role of Kim, a longtime friend of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey’s characters who throw one last house party at their parents’ pad.

Ride Along 2

Glen Powell (Fast Food Nation, Best Friends Forever) has joined the cast of Universal’s Ride Along 2. Ice Cube and Kevin Hart lead the cast of the comedy sequel which is being directed by Tim Story.

The Beatles 

Ron Howard will direct a feature documentary on The Beatles. The focus will be the period from 1960-1966 when the mop-topped quartet took Europe and then the United States by storm with a flurry of 166 concerts in 15 countries and 90 cities. By the time they finished the last concert in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1966, they were as big a band as Elvis Presley was a solo artist.

The film begins with the band honing its chops in Liverpool’s Cavern Club, to its first road trip shows in Hamburg, Germany, and other European countries in 1963, right before they came to America for an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

They have begun pulling together footage of appearances and concerts, and are working with docu editor/director Paul Crowder

The Jungle Book

10-year old Neel Sethi will be playing the part of Mowgli in Jon Favreau‘s version of Disney‘s The Jungle Book.

Stereotypically You

Aaron Tveit has the lead role in Stereotypically You, a romantic comedy from writer-director Benjamin Cox. Tveit plays Charlie, who goes on a hallucination-fueled post-breakup quest in New York City to find new love — and himself. Kal Penn, Shane McRae, Lauren Miller, Abby Elliot, Chris Elliot, Annaleigh Ashford, Lewis Black, Kelen Coleman co-star. Tveit also has landed a role in They Might Be Kennedys, which Neal McDonough is exec producing.

Sicario

Jeffrey Donovan has joined the cast of Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario…In the Lionsgate actioner starring Benecio Del Toro and Emily Blunt, he will play Steve Forsing, a no-nonsense DEA Agent who engages in an all-out firefight at the Juarez border while transferring a prisoner.

Jurassic World

Courtney James Clark has landed a role in Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World, from producer Steven Spielberg. She joins a cast that includes Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard and Vincent D’Onofrio in the film that picks up 22 years after the events of 1993’s Jurassic Park.

Untitled Cold War Spy thriller

Amy Ryan will co-star opposite Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s untitled Cold War Spy thriller for DreamWorks.

The pic is based on the true story of James Donovan (Hanks), the CIA attorney who is thrust behind the Iron Curtain when he is sent to negotiate the release of captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. The Coen brothers wrote the 1960s-set screenplay off Matt Charman’s original script. Ryan…will play Donovan’s wife.

Alan Alda has also been cast in the film.

The Last Witch Hunter

Michael Caine has come aboard The Last Witch Hunter, the supernatural action film starring Diesel and Rose Leslie and directed by Breck Eisner. Summit is releasing the pic, about an immortal witch hunter (Diesel) who partners with his natural enemy, a female witch, to stop the covens of NY from unleashing a plague on humanity.

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Source: Variety, Deadline