Film Casting: INDIGNATION, MENA, James Franco directing THE LONG HOME

Indignation, Mena, The Long Home, 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.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Julie Delpy and Linda Cardellini. Neither actress has been in a Marvel movie before but both are well-known, which suggests more than just a fleeting cameo.

G.I. Joe 3

Aaron Berg…has been tapped to pen a new script for G.I. Joe 3, and will work with director D.J. Caruso to revamp the action franchise

Indignation

Sarah Gadon…will star opposite Logan Lerman (Fury) in James Schamus’ directorial debut Indignation

Indignation is set in 1951 and focuses on Marcus (Lerman), the 18-year-old son of a kosher butcher in Newark (Lerman) who grapples with anti-Semitism, sexual repression and the escalating Korean War as he comes of age at a Midwestern Lutheran college. Into his life comes Olivia Hutton (Gadon). Blonde and pretty, Olivia is a classmate of Marcus at Winesburg College. She goes on a date with Marcus and is attracted to his intensity. She is sexually promiscuous, headstrong and fiercely independent. A daughter to a highly regarded Cleveland surgeon, Olivia had previously attempted suicide and spent time in a mental institution.

Mena

Sarah Wright Olsen (Marry Me) has been cast opposite Tom Cruise in Mena, the drug-pilot drama.It’s a fact-based tale about Barry Seal (Cruise), a pilot who was a gun runner and drug trafficker who transported contraband for the CIA and the Medellin cartel during the 1980s. The title refers to Mena, AK, where a lot of the illegal activity took place under the noses of Presidents Reagan and Bush and then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Wright will play Barry’s wife Lucy Seal, a former homecoming queen-turned-homemaker who in the beginning is completely unaware of her husband’s exploits.

The Wolf Who Cried Boy

Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) has joined the cast of indie drama The Wolf Who Cried Boy…Abdi will play Reggie, a limo driver who acts as a fence for stolen copper.

Stephanie

Kenneth Choi…has joined Universal’s horror-thriller Stephanie.

Akiva Goldsman…is directing the Blumhouse and Chapter One project, which will star Frank Grillo, Shree Crooks and Anna Torv. The story centers on a young girl named Stephanie (Crooks) who is abandoned by her parents, forced to survive on peanut butter and conversations with her toy turtle. When her parents return to claim their daughter, they find dark supernatural forces are wreaking havoc, with Stephanie at the center of the turmoil.

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Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski wrote the script for the horror project

The Long Home

James Franco has come on board to direct and produce William Gay’s “The Long Home,” a coming-of-age story set in rural Tennessee in the 1940s.

The story centers on a young and headstrong Tennessee carpenter who lost his father years before to a human evil and is forced to make difficult moral choices to face up to that evil.

Update

Speed-The-Plow

David Mamet’s acerbic 1988 stage play about Hollywood, Speed-The-Plow, is headed for the big screen…a film that Mamet himself will adapt based on his Tony-nominated play.

In the play, newly appointed studio chief Bobby Gould is under pressure to deliver a hit. His longtime colleague Charlie Fox gifts him with a tip that will enrich Fox and enable the studio chief to land a superstar who always works for a rival studio. But as the men discuss, they involve an attractive temp secretary who becomes the subject of a bet between them over who can bed her. Turns out she has her own angle to rise up the Hollywood ladder, and manipulates both Hollywood vets.

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Source: Variety, Deadline, Slashfilm