Film Casting: SUICIDE SQUAD, BANDITS, Actors test for X-MEN: APOCALYPSE [Updated]

Suicide Squad, Bandits, X-Men: Apocalypse, and other movies 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.

Dirty Grandpa

Aubrey Plaza has signed onto the comedy about an uptight twenty-something (Efron) who embarks on a road trip before his wedding to bond with his recently widowed grandfather (De Niro) only to find that his grandpa is a foul-mouthed lunatic on a mission to get laid during Spring Break.

Plaza will play Lenore, a savvy, beguiling party girl looking for fun on Spring Break.

Dan Mazer (Da Ali G Show) is directing from a screenplay by John Phillips

Elvis And Nixon

Evan Peters…has landed a role in the indie Elvis And Nixon. The historical drama was set…with Kevin Spacey set to play President Nixon opposite Michael Shannon as Elvis Presley.

Written by Hanala Sagal and Joey Sagal with Cary Elwes, the pic centers on an odd 1970 meeting between Presley and the president that famously yielded one of the more curious White House photo ops in pop culture history, when Elvis wanted to become a federal agent to support Nixon’s drug policy.

Peters will play Dwight Chapin, the White House aide who helped organize the meeting between the two men, after Elvis showed up on the White House lawn one early December morning asking to meet directly to the President.

Tales of Halloween

The anthology has cast Rocky Horror Picture Show icon Barry Bostwick as well as horror staple Lin Shaye and Heroes’ Greg Grunberg, while the likes of Joe Dante, John Landis, Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, Adrienne Barbeau, and Adam Green are expected to stop in for cameos.

More next-gen genre actors have joined the project, including Pat Healy (The Innkeepers, Cheap Thrills), Alex Essoe (Starry Eyes), Booboo Stewart (The Twilight Saga), Keir Gilchrist (It Follows), Noah Segan (Looper), Pollyannna McIntosh (The Woman), James Duval (Donnie Darko), Kristina Klebe (Halloween), Marc Senter (The Devil’s Carnival), Jose Pablo Cantillo (The Walking Dead), Grace Phipps (Dark Summer), Sam Witwer (Being Human), and Graham Skipper (Almost Human).

Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III and IV), Axelle Carolyn (Soulmate), Adam Gierasch (Night of the Demons), Andrew Kasch (Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy), Neil Marshall (The Descent), Lucky McKee (All Cheerleaders Die, The Woman), Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider!), Dave Parker (The Hills Run Red), Ryan Schifrin (Abominable), John Skipp (Stay at Home Dad), and Paul Solet (Grace) are at the helm of Tales of Halloween

Dork Diaries

Lionsgate and Summit have tapped writer Annie Hendy to adapt YA project Dork Diaries

Advertisement

 

Dork Diaries centers on an eighth grade student navigating the mean girls, crushes, friends, and enemies at a new school

Bandits

Bruce Willis is the driving force behind this one, and he will play the lead role in an ensemble drama that will be scripted by Mitch Glazer…The tale is a black comedy that is set in New Orleans and Willis will play Jack Delaney, an ex-con who is struggling to stay on the straight path as he dresses up corpses as a mortician in his brother’s funeral home. Things get much more exciting for him when he meets a gorgeous lapsed nun who is just back from Nicaragua where she took care of lepers and tried to keep the contras from hacking them up with machetes. She wants to smuggle a beautiful young Nicaraguan woman – who contracted leprosy–because the woman’s ex-lover, a Somoza-type colonel, wants to kill her for possibly infecting him. That same guy is raising millions from rich Americans to take back to the contras and the bored mortician finds his own cause, stiffing the colonel and getting away with a fortune with the help of the nun and an ex-cop.

When The Bough Breaks

Theo Rossi…[has]…joined the cast of psychological thriller When The Bough Breaks opposite Morris Chestnut, Regina Hall, and Jaz Sinclair, which 24‘s Jon Cassar is helming for Screen Gems.

the film [is] about a professional couple unable to conceive their own child who hire a blue collar woman to act as their surrogate (Sinclair). Unfortunately for the hopeful parents, she develops a violent fixation on the husband before the baby is even born.

Rossi…will play Mike Mitchell, the surrogate’s fiancé.

Queen of Katwe

David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong’o are in talks to star in Disney’s “Queen of Katwe,” set to be directed by Mira Nair

the adaptation has a script by…screenwriter William Wheeler.

Story follows young chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi, rising out of the slums of Uganda to enter the World Chess Olympiad. Nyong’o will play the girl’s mother, while Oyelowo will play her coach.

X-Men: Apocalypse

For Young Cyclops the new contenders are Taron Edgerton, Jamie Blackley, and Tye Sheridan.

For Young Jean Grey the new contenders are Sophie Turner and Saoirse Ronan.

For Young Storm the contenders being mentioned for the first time are Alexandra Shipp and Zendaya Coleman.

Suicide Squad

Viola Davis is nearing a multi-picture deal to play Amanda Waller in…David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad”

Ayer is also writing the script for “Suicide Squad”

Waller…[is]…“a former congressional aide and government agent who is often placed in charge of the Suicide Squad, a semi-secret government-run group of former super villains working in return for amnesty.”

Pete’s Dragon

Michael C. Hall is set to join the cast of Disney’s remake of “Pete’s Dragon.”

Carrie Pilby

Hailee Steinfeld will star in Carrie Pilby, the film adaptation of the coming-of-age novel by Caren Lissner.

Susan Johnson will direct the indie, which centers on a 19-year-old genius who has just graduated from Harvard and has no idea how to fit in or socialize in life outside college.

 Kara Holden wrote the script, with Dean Craig working on later drafts.

Star Wars Stand-alone Film

Starlight

Gary Whitta is no longer writing a Star Wars standalone movie.

Whitta was working with Gareth Edwards, the filmmaker behind last year’s Godzilla movie, on the project and completed a first draft.

Whitta is now moving on to his next project…One of the projects on his docket is Starlight, Fox’s adaptation of the Mark Millar sci-fi comic book miniseries.

Leave your thoughts on this film casting, screenwriting, and director news below in the comments section. For more film news, visit our Movie News Page, our Movie News Google+ Page, our Movie News Facebook Page, and consider subscribing to us by Email, “follow” us on Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, or “like” us on Facebook for quick updates.

Source: Hollywoodreporter, Variety, Latinoreview, Deadline, Thewrap