DiCaprio playing poker in new drama
Leonardo DiCaprio is attached to star in a film set in the world of online poker.
Paramount is developing the untitled project after picking up a pitch from writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who covered similar ground with their debut script for Rounders, which starred Edward Norton and Matt Damon as high-stakes players in the underground poker scene. The plot of the new film was being kept appropriately close to the vest.
DiCaprio, who most recently starred in Revolutionary Road, returns to theatres in October with Paramount’s Martin Scorsese-directed thriller Shutter Island.
Red Dawn remake adds two to cast
The Wolverines are gathering. Josh Peck and Adrianne Palicki have been cast in the remake of 1984’s Red Dawn, set to begin filming in September. They join the already cast Chris Hemsworth in the story of a group of teenagers, who form an insurgency after their town is invaded by Chinese and Russian soldiers.
Peck will play Matt Eckert – the role originated by Charlie Sheen – the hotheaded younger brother of Hemsworth’s Jed Eckert (originally played by Patrick Swayze) and star quarterback of their Spokane high school football team. Palicki will play Toni, the role first inhabited by Jennifer Grey. She’s a tough fighter, who develops romantic feelings for Jed, a Marine home on leave and the group’s unofficial leader.
Dan Bradley, a stunt coordinator and second-unit director on The Bourne Ultimatum and Quantum Of Solace, will direct the revamp of the Cold War-era film co-written and directed by John Milius. Carl Ellsworth and Jeremy Passmore wrote the updated screenplay. The MGM/United Artists film is scheduled to hit theatres September 24, 2010.
Peck’s recent screen credits include roles in The Wackness, Drillbit Taylor and What Goes Up. He reprises his voice-cast work as Eddie in the animated sequel Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs, which will be released July 1. Palicki co-stars on the series Friday Night Lights and will appear next year in the big-screen thriller Legion.
Curtis, Chenoweth sign on for comedy Again
The comedy feature You Again has taken on some female power. Jamie Lee Curtis, Kristin Chenoweth, Odette Yustman and Betty White have joined the cast of the Disney film, as has Victor Garber. They join Kristen Bell and Sigourney Weaver in the movie, which will be directed by Andy Fickman.
The story centres on a woman (Bell) who finds out that her brother plans to marry the girl who made her high school years a living hell and tries to convince him that his fiancee is not the nice girl, she pretends to be.
Curtis and Garber will play Bell’s parents and White will play her grandmother. (Weaver is her rich Aunt Ramona.) Chenoweth plays “a wedding extraordinator.” Yustman plays Bell’s nemesis.
Moe Jelline wrote the screenplay.
Curtis, who starred in Disney’s Freaky Friday in 2003, appeared last year in the studio’s Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
Chenoweth starred in the ABC series Pushing Daisies. Her most recent film was Four Christmases.
White next appears on the big screen in the romantic comedy The Proposal, which opens Friday. Garber’s most recent film role was in last year’s Milk, as San Francisco Mayor George Moscone.
