Film Casting: ANGRY BIRDS, ZOMBIELAND 2, Ron Perlman in THE JESUIT

Angry Birds, Zombieland 2, The Jesuit, 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.

Miss You Already

Tyson Ritter is cozying up to Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette for friendship comedy/drama Miss You Already…and will play the young love interest to one of the ladies.

Barrymore and Collette star as Milly and Jess, best friends who have shared everything since they were kids. Now, Milly has a high-flying job and lives in a beautiful townhouse with husband Kit (Dominic Cooper) and their two kids. Jess is a town planner and she and her boyfriend Jago (Paddy Considine) live on a bohemian houseboat on a London canal. Their friendship is tested when Jess struggles to have a baby and Milly finds out she has breast cancer. Jacqueline Bisset also stars as Milly’s mother.

I Saw The Light

Maddie Hasson has been cast in I Saw The Light, writer-director Marc Abraham’s biopic about country music legend Hank Williams. She will play Billie Jean, a 19-year-old who pursued by Williams (Tom Hiddleston) after his divorce from Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen). She eventually becomes his second wife — and his widow.

By Way Of Helena

Emory Cohen has landed a role in By Way Of Helena, a revenge Western from director Kieran Darcy-Smith. Matt Cook wrote the script, which made the 2009 Black List. Liam Hemsworth stars as an 1880s Texas Ranger sent to an isolated frontier town to investigate a series of murders. There he squares off against a fearsome local preacher (Woody Harrelson). Cohen will play Isaac.

The Highway Is For Gamblers

Nikki Reed has been cast opposite Harry Potter thesp Bonnie Wright in thriller The Highway Is For Gamblers. Writer-director Alexandra McGuinness follows…the desert-set tale of Jane (Reed), a newly crowned rodeo queen who goes missing, and her friend Heidi (Wright), who uncovers secrets and encounters the violence of life on the road while searching for her pal…Gustaf Skarsgård and pop singer/actor Joe Jonas round out the indie cast.

The Finest Hours

Eric Bana has signed on to Craig Gillespie’s disaster-at-sea feature The Finest Hours, which chronicles the massive rescue mission that’s launched when a pair of oil tankers split in two off the coast of Cape Cod in 1952. Bana joins Chris Pine and Casey Affleck, who were previously announced to star in Disney’s adaptation of the best-selling book by Casey Sherman and Michael J. Tougias. Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson wrote the initial draft The Finest Hours, and Scott Silver wrote the latest greenlit version.

Bana will play Daniel Cluff, the deeply respected Coast Guard warrant officer and point supervisor to Bernie (Pine). Cluff orders Bernie to set out on the dangerous rescue mission despite his wife’s wishes.

All Roads Lead To Rome

Sarah Jessica Parker will play the lead in romantic comedy All Roads Lead To Rome…Parker stars as Maggie, an uptight American on a road trip throughout Italy with her Italian former lover Luca as they seek out Maggie’s rebellious teenage daughter…Ella Lemhagen (The Crown Jewels) is directing from a screenplay she co-wrote with Cindy Meyers and Josh Appignanesi.

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Truth

Topher Grace is set to star with Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett in Truth

Grace will play Mike Smith to Redford’s Dan Rather and Blanchett’s Mary Mapes (the producer of the news report); Smith is a researcher who helped figure out the truth behind the story — one that left Rather’s reputation tattered and led to the dismissal of Mapes.

Dennis Quaid has landed the role of Col. Roger Charles in Truth…Quaid’s character served two tours in Vietnam, then in the Pentagon before becoming a liaison working with 60 Minutes II. He was invaluable in working with Mapes when she broke the blockbuster scandalous news story of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. On the heels of that triumph, Charles chased the rumor that then-President George W. Bush had ducked serving in Vietnam after he graduated Yale in 1968 and instead got a cushy gig in the National Guard because of the clout of his father, who was an ambassador at the time. Charles and Mapes got caught relying on dubious documents.

The Godmother

Catherine Zeta-Jones…will play real life kingpin Griselda Blanco, the first and only woman to rise to the higher echelons of Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel.

Blanco was a fearsome figure at the center of the Miami drug wars of the 1970s and ’80s depicted in the 2006 Magnolia Pictures-Rakontur documentary Cocaine Cowboys and its 2008 sequel, Cocaine Cowboys 2. Her reign of terror, in which she’s suspected to have ordered hundreds of assassinations to stay in money and power, was so vicious and violent that it earned her the nicknames La Madrina, Black Widow, and the Cocaine Godmother.

Maryland / Sky

Diane Kruger…will first head to the south of France to film Maryland for director Alice Winocour…The film tracks an ex-soldier with PTSD who is hired to protect the wife and child of a wealthy Lebanese businessman while he’s out of town. Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead, Rust and Bone) will play the soldier.

Kruger will then head to the American southwest set of Sky to re-team with director Fabienne Berthaud…The film tracks a woman’s reawakening through her solitary journey into foreign lands

Angry Birds

Jason Sudekis, Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph have signed on to join Sony-Rovio’s Angry Birds animated film along with a bevy of mostly comedy stars. Also set are Josh Gad, Danny McBride, Peter Dinklage, Keegan-Michael Key, SNL‘s Kate McKinnon, Tony Hale, Ike Barinholtz, Hannibal Buress, Cristela Alonzo, Jillian Bell, Danielle Brooks, Grammy nominee Romeo Santos, and YouTube stars Smosh (Ian Andrew Hecox and Anthony Padilla).

Sudeikis will portray Red, a bird with a bad temper; Gad plays the speedy bird Chuck, McBride plays the bulky Bomb while Dinklage portrays the Mighty Eagle. Hader will voice a character on the pig nemesis side, while Rudolph will play Matilda.

The Killer

Studiocanal has hired Alex Holmes to adapt The Killer for Pierre Morel to direct…It centers on Victor, a mysterious, quick-witted and charismatic gun for hire whose conscience begins to catch up with him and as a result puts him at odds with his employers.

Zombieland 2

Sony Pictures…just hired Dave Callaham to write the sequel under the supervision of Ruben Fleischer, who’ll return to direct.

Man Down

Jai Courtney has joined the cast of Man Down, the psychological thriller from helmer Dito Montiel…[the] actor joins Shia LaBeouf, Gary Oldman, and Kate Mara in the story of Gabriel Drummer, a haunted Afghanistan war veteran who attempts to come to terms with his past while searching for his family in a post-apocalyptic America. Courtney will play the role of Devin, Gabriel’s best friend who served with him in the war. Montiel is directing from a screenplay by Adam Simon.

The Ones Below

David Farr is making his feature directing debut with The Ones Below…The Ones Below focuses on two affluent couples living above and below each other whose lives become fatally interlinked. Clémence Poésy (The Tunnel, Harry Potter), David Morrissey (The Walking Dead), Stephen Campbell Moore (The History Boys) and Finnish actress Laura Birn (A Walk Among The Tombstones) star in the ensemble that’s also scripted by Farr.

The story follows upstairs couple Kate (Poésy) and Justin (Campbell Moore) who are expecting their first baby, and Jon (Morrissey) and Teresa (Birn) who move in downstairs and are also expecting a child. In contrast to Kate, Teresa is full of joy at the prospect of imminent motherhood. Pregnancy brings the women together in shared confidence, until one night a joint dinner begins to reveal all is not as it seems with ‘The Ones Below.’

Counting By 7s

The Mazur/Kaplan Company and Olympus Pictures have…attached…Quvenzhané Wallis and will build the movie around her. The bestseller centers on Willow Chance, a bright young girl who, after the death of her adoptive parents, is taken in by an unlikely surrogate family and an unfit guidance counselor. In the wake of tremendous loss, she rises to build a community that she heals and that heals her.

Fresno

Aubrey Plaza, Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen, Ron Livingston and Clea Duvall have joined the cast of Jamie Babbit’s raucous comedy “Fresno.”

Judy Greer and Natasha Lyonne are set to star.

Story follows two co-dependent sisters who work as hotel maids in Fresno.

The Maze Runner Chapter II: The Scorch Trials

Giancarlo Esposito has joined the cast of Fox’s “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.”

Director Wes Ball is returning

Esposito will play the Jorge character, a leader of the Cranks group of survivors.

The Jesuit

Ron Perlman (“Hellboy,” “Sons of Anarchy,” “Drive”) has completed the key cast of Alfonso Pineda Ulloa’s “The Jesuit”

A road movie actioner, “The Jesuit,” turns on an ex-con, wrongly imprisoned, called The Jesuit, whose ex-wife is murdered by her boy-friend who then kidnaps his son. The Jesuit devises an elaborate plan to save his son and avenge the murder, embarking on a revenge rampage from Texas through Mexico to its deep, deep jungle in Mexico’s south. Perlman plays “The Jesuit’s” out-and-out villain.

Jose Maria Yaspik (“I’m So Excited! “The Burning Plain”) plays The Jesuit; Paz Vega (“Spanglish”), Shannyn Sossamann (“One Missed Call”) and Tim Roth co-star.

In another late cast addition, Heidrich Sellati (“The Americans”) plays The Jesuit’s son.

Four Adam Sandler Films

Netflix has set a quartet of films that will star Adam Sandler, who’ll produce the features under his Happy Madison banner. The films will bypass theaters and be made available directly to Netflix subscribers in 50 countries.

Halfway

Quinton Aaron, “Twilight Saga” actor Edi Gathegi and “90210” actress Gillian Zinser are set to star in British writer Ben Caird’s feature directorial debut “Halfway”

“Halfway” stars Aaron as Byron, a recently-released convict who finds himself trapped between two worlds — his urban criminal past and his new life as the only black man in a predominantly white, conservative Wisconsin farming town. The film chronicles Byron’s struggles as he adapts to his new life on probation, while trying to elude the very real threat of relapsing into his old life of crime.

Zinser will play the eldest daughter of Byron’s new family for whom he becomes a friend and confidante, while Gathegi plays Paulie, Byron’s lifelong pal who hasn’t been afforded the same second chance.

Amy Pietz and TJ Power will co-star in the film

Indiana Jones 5

Disney and Lucasfilm…hired a cinematographer to shoot the film, and that cinematographer’s name is Janusz Kaminski. He has made several films with director Steven Spielberg.

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Source: Geektyrant, Thewrap, Deadline, Variety