Film Casting: LEATHERFACE, SEVEN FIVE, Peter Dinklage & Nicola Peltz in DEEP BLUE GOODBYE

Leatherface, The Seven Five, Deep Blue Goodbye, 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.

Leatherface

Sam Strike…is in negotiations to star in Leatherface, the Texas Chain Saw Massacre prequel that is coming together at Millennium Films

The prequel will go back before Tobe Hooper’s 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and tell of Leatherface’s teenage years. Strike is nearing a deal to play ‘Jackson’, the teenager who grows up to become Leatherface.

James Bloor…is in final negotiations to play Ike, a budding young maniac who, like Strike’s character, also grows up to potentially wield the iconic chainsaw.

We’re hearing there are multiple actors who play younger versions of Leatherface, and Bloor could be one of them.

Angela Bettis was cast as Mother Sawyer in the prequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

As we exclusively reported back on Halloween, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo…will be helming Leatherface

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Joining the previously announced cast is Zombie regular, Malcolm McDowell, who plays Dr. Loomis in Zombie’s Halloween films.

McDowell plays ‘Father Murder’, the owner of Murder World for which the film is based.

Judy Geeson plays ‘Sister Dragon’, who runs Murder World alongside McDowell. She joins David Ury, who will be playing Schizo-Head, one half of murderous team of brothers living inside Murder World. Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs was recently cast as Panda Thomas, with Elizabeth Daily (E.G. Daily) playing ‘Sex-head’, and Torsten Voges as the insane partner of Death-Head.

Daniel Roebuck plays Paster Victor, an unfortunate participant in last year’s game of 31.

Unless

Matt Craven has been cast in Unless, a feature adaptation of Carol Shields’ best seller. Catherine Keener stars as Reta, a writer whose daughter has run away and is found homeless and panhandling on the streets of Toronto. Craven will play her husband, Tom.

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Year By The Sea

S. Epatha Merkerson has landed a role in Year By The Sea, director Alexander Janko’s take on Joan Anderson’s novel. It centers on an empty-nester who retreats to Cape Cod rather than follow her husband to Kansas. Once there, she finds herself “an unfinished woman,” ripe with possibilities. Merkerson, plays Liz, the woman’s straight-talking, hard-driving literary agent.

The Jaunt

Plan B…has attached Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti…this will be developed for Andy to direct.

King first published the short story in Twilight Zone Magazine, but gained prominence in his short-story anthology Skeleton Crew, published in 1985. It’s a futuristic tale that takes place in the 24th century, as a father explains the ground rules for “Jaunting,” a form of teleportation the family will be using shortly to go to Mars. The key is that travelers must be under anesthesia for the short journey, or terrible things happen to the mind of those being jaunted around the solar system. Time stands still and one’s brain implodes with too much time to think in an absence of external stimulation. Bad things happen.

The Amazing Randi

Barry Sonnenfeld has signed on to direct a feature adaptation based on James “The Amazing’ Randi’s” Project Alpha, a real-life story that appeared in the feature documentary An Honest Liar…Justin Weinstein’s and Tyler Measom’s An Honest Liar is based on the life of psychic fake and debunker The Amazing Randi. Project Alpha was a ruse done by “Randi” along with Steve Shaw (known as Banachek) and Michael Edwards who auditioned for and then participated as “psychics” in a paranormal research project led by a team who truly believed that the two had psychic abilities.

The testing of the two “psychics” included spoon bending, blowing fuses and moving objects in a sealed transparent container. The project went on for two years, beginning in 1979, until they revealed it as a hoax publicly in a press conference via Discover Magazine.

The Great Wall

the Zhang Yimou-helmed epic starring Matt Damon…[has] locked the cast

In addition to Damon…[are] Pedro Pascal and Willem Defoe…joining up are some of the Middle Kingdom’s most famous actors including Infernal Affairs star Andy Lau, Eddie Peng and Jing Tian as well as Zhang Hanyu, Lu Han, Lin Gengxin, Zheng Kai, Chen Xuedong, Huang Xuan and Wang Junkai.

The script is by Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro, but the most recent draft is from Tony Gilroy

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Beau Knapp has joined Ang Lee’s supporting cast in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk…In Billy Lynn, Knapp will play Crack (as in Cracker?), a cocksure good ol’ Alabama boy with violent tendencies.

The Seven Five

Sony Pictures is eyeing Scott Frank to write The Seven Five, the feature film adaptation of the hard-hitting ’80s NYPD corrupt-cop documentary…it will…pair Frank with already attached helmer Yann Demange.

Deep Blue Goodbye

Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage and Transformers: Age of Extinction actress Nicola Peltz are in negotiations to join Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike in Deep Blue Goodbye

James Mangold is directing the project, which was at times operating under the title Travis McGee. McGee is the protagonist of the picture. He’s a free-wheeling bachelor living on a house boat, acting as a self-proclaimed “salvage consultant.”

The script sees McGee, now reimagined as an Afghan war vet, on the trail of stolen sapphires, which leads to a sadistic torturer.

Dinklage will play a mathematician who made a fortune thanks to an app and ends up as McGee’s sidekick.

Peltz…will play a woman who acts older than she is, knows more about the sapphires than she lets on, hires McGee to find them and ends up on the wrong side of the torturer.

The Stars My Destination

Jordan Vogt-Roberts…is in talks to direct The Stars My Destination

The story, published as a serialized tale and then a novel in 1957, tells of a man who is marooned in space after his ship is attacked and everyone else killed. When a passing starship ignores his distress beacon, it sets the man on a Count of Monte Cristo-like journey to get revenge.

“Jaunting,” aka teleportation, figures into the story as does an explosive that is set off telepathically.

Richard Pryor biopic

Eddie Murphy is in talks to join the Richard Pryor biopic that Lee Daniels is directing for The Weinstein Co.

Mike Epps is starring as the comedian who pushed the boundaries of race and mined his own gritty experiences, becoming one of the most influential acts of all time.

Pryor was raised by his grandmother, a hard woman who ran a brothel, and by his father, an alcoholic who beat him on the days his grandmother didn’t. Stories of both were frequently told as part of his routine.

Murphy will play the father, LeRoy Pryor.

Kate Hudson would play Jennifer Lee Pryor, who was Pryor’s fourth wife (they married in 1981 and divorced in 1982) as well as his seventh; they remarried in 2001.

Beauty and the Beast

Josh Gad…is in final negotiations…for the [Disney’s] live action take on Beauty and the Beast.

Gad will play Le Fou, the buffoonish and loyal sidekick to the manly hunter Gaston, a character that was specifically created for the 1991 movie.

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Source: Bloody-disgusting, Hollywoodreporter