What's Hot

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Welcome back to another edition of “This Week in Casting,” the column that gives you the rundown of who’s attached to the hottest upcoming projects in Hollywood. From big time players to fresh-faced rookies, we’ve got the week in review for you right here. This week, we’ve got casting news about Sandra Bullock, Robert Pattison, Rupert Grint, and many more. Get all the details below!

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BIG NAMES
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Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy will co-star in untitled buddy cop movie

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The movie: Bridesmaids director Paul Feig will direct Sandra Bullock as an FBI agent (for the first time since the Miss Congeniality franchise) and a wildcard Boston cop (McCarthy) as they take down a Russian gangster.
Other projects: Bullock stars opposite George Clooney in the sci-fi thriller Gravity, while McCarthy steals Jason Bateman’s identity in the upcoming comedy Identity Theft.
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Tom Cruise set to star in remake of The Magnificent Seven

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The movie: A remake of the 1960 classic western, this film will presumably bring together some of the industry’s biggest stars as seven mercenaries hired to protect a small town from bandits. This one is a few years away from production, but Cruise is passionate about it and he’s a big enough name to pull a few favors to get other big names involved when the time comes. Expect this to be huge in, like, 2016.
Other projects: He’s got Rock of Ages out this year, and he’s leading two sci-fi action movies coming soon, All You Need Is Kill and Oblivion.
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Robert Pattinson to play a rock star in biopic called The Band

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The movie: The movie will tell the story of The Band, which began playing backup for Bob Dylan before blowing up into music legends in their own right. RPattz calls it “a beautiful script about the nature of songwriting.”
Other projects: He’s got David Cronenberg’s bizarre film Cosmopolis out this year, as well as finishing off the Twilight franchise in November.
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Jay-Z to write music for a remake of Annie starring Willow Smith

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The movie: A new take on the classic musical about a girl who lives at an orphanage, Jay-Z is rumored to be writing all new songs for the project. Willow Smith is taking the lead role, and her dad, Will, is going to be producing the movie while Will’s Men in Black 3 co-star Emma Thompson will be writing the script.
Other projects: All is quiet for Jay in the wake of Watch The Throne, and Willow has finished her run on TV’s “True Jackson, VP” so she doesn’t have anything else lined up yet, either.
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Owen Wilson, Brie Larson, Olivia Wilde, and Jason Schwartzman starring in a comedy called Squirrels to the Nuts

The movie: Larson plays a hooker-turned-Broadway actor, Wilson plays a man who pays for her “services” despite being married to the star of her new play, and Wilde will play a therapist. No word yet on Schwartzman’s role, but Wes Anderson fans should know that the director is producing this project alongside fellow indie filmmaker Noah Baumbach.
Other projects: Larson will star with Wilde and Jason Sudeikis in a comedy called Relanxious out next year, while Wilson is returning to action movie mode for The Coup, in which he has to save his family from a local rebellion when they move to a foreign country.
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Rupert Grint joins two movies, CBGB and The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman

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The movies: CBGB reunites Grint with his Harry Potter co-star Alan Rickman, who plays the owner of the famous CBGB club in New York City. Grint plays Cheetah Chrome, the guitarist for a 1970s punk band called The Dead Boys. The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman stars Shia LaBeouf as a guy who falls for a girl who “belongs” to a crazy mob boss, and it charts the crazy things LaBeouf does to save her. No word yet on what part Grint will play there.
Other projects: He’ll star opposite Chloe Moretz in the Beach Boys biopic The Drummer.
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RISING STARS
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Minka Kelly playing Jackie Kennedy in The Butler

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The movie: It tells the true story of Eugene Allen (Forest Whitaker), a White House butler who served under eight Presidents and watched as the country changed dramatically around him during that time. It stars a host of huge talent, including Matthew McConaughey as JFK (Kelly will play his wife), Oprah Winfrey as Allen’s wife, John Cusack as Richard Nixon, Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan, and Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan. Terrence Howard is also on board to star.
Where you might have seen her: Minka’s breakout performance was in the TV series “Friday Night Lights,” but she also appeared in the short-lived “Charlie’s Angels” TV reboot.
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Saoirse Ronan starring in Testament of Youth

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The movie: Ronan will play Vera Brittain, based on the real life story of a World War I nurse who became an author and advocate for peace and feminism after the war ended. (She’ll be able to bust out that British accent again.)
Where you might have seen her: She’s had some big roles, but I’d yet to call her a household name. She starred in Hanna, Atonement, and will appear in the upcoming Stephenie Meyer adaptation The Host.
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Abigail Breslin as the lead in Final Girl

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The movie: Taking its name from the movie trope of their being one last girl left alive in horror movies, Final Girl will star Breslin in a thriller about a group of feral teenage boys who pick the wrong girl to mess with in their final “initiation.”
Where you might have seen her: Breslin starred in M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs but really made her mark in Little Miss Sunshine, and has since appeared in Zombieland and one of my personal favorite romantic comedies, Definitely, Maybe.
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Taran Killam joins the cast of Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years A Slave

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The movie: Serenity star Chiwetel Ejiofor will take the lead as an educated man who is sold into slavery for twelve years, and Killam plays a traveling circus worker who abducts him. Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, and Paul Dano also star, so this should be a good one.
Where you might have seen him: He’s on “Saturday Night Live,” and now that a lot of the big name cast members are leaving, he could be one of the next big names to emerge from the show.
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