Film Casting: READY PLAYER ONE, NEST, Stephan James in RACE

Ready Player One, Nest, Race, and other films have 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.

I Kill Giants

Zoe Saldana has signed on to star alongside up-and-coming young actress Madison Wolfe in director Anders Walter’s “I Kill Giants,” the film adaptation of Joe Kelly’s critically acclaimed graphic novel, it was announced Friday.

“I Kill Giants” tells the story of a young misfit girl named Barbara (Wolfe) battling both real and imaginary monsters in her life. Saldana will play school psychologist Mrs. Mollé, who plays a key role by helping Barbara face both internal and external threats, forming an inspiring bond with her in the process.

Kelly…has also written the screenplay adaptation.

Ready Player One

Olivia Cooke has emerged as director Steven Spielberg‘s favorite for the female lead in “Ready Player One.”

Cooke is in early talks for the coveted part, an individual familiar with the negotiations said.

The casting would take her out of the running to join Disney’s “Star Wars: Episode VIII,” for which she was also being considered.

Red Sparrow

Jennifer Lawrence is orbiting Red Sparrow, an adaptation of the Jason Matthews espionage novel at Fox. The hope is for her to re-team on the project with Francis Lawrence, her director on The Hunger Games: Mockingjay–Parts 1 and the upcoming 2.

Justin Haythe is being hired to rewrite a script by American Hustle scribe Eric Warren.

The book is set in contemporary Russia, and state intelligence officer Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) struggles to survive in the cast-iron bureaucracy of post-Soviet intelligence. Drafted against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress in the service, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer who handles the agency’s most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence. The two young intelligence officers collide in a charged atmosphere of trade craft, deception, and inevitably, a sexual attraction that threatens their careers and the security of America’s valuable mole in Moscow.

Dominika winds up seeking revenge against her soulless masters, and living a fatal double life after she is recruited by the CIA to ferret out a high-level traitor in Washington. She also hunts down a Russian illegal buried deep in the U.S. military and, against all odds, to return to Moscow as the new-generation penetration of Vladimir Putin’s intelligence service.