GENERAL MOVIE NEWS

Liam Hemsworth

After The Expendables 2 and with brother Chris showing off his skills in Thor, younger bro Liam is keen to show off his action skills, as Deadline reports that he’s signed up to star as a fighter pilot in Aurora Rising.

Christian Gudegast has written the script, which will see Hemsworth playing a surfer turned military pilot who proves he’s got what it takes on his first combat mission. He gets recruited to an elite team who are testing the next generation of aircraft. When an international conflict breaks out, he’s called to fight.

No director is attached as yet.

It’s a busy year for Hemsworth who has Paranoia coming out later in the summer and will be seen in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in November.

If all had gone to plan, we’d already have had Gotti in cinemas by now, but endless delays over script and casting caused the whole thing to crash, before it was picked up again a few weeks ago by director Joe Johnston. Now he’s driving is forward, with Variety reporting that he’s signed Anthony Hopkins for an unspecified role in the biopic.

John Travolta is still set to star as Gambino family crime boss John Gotti, with Kelly Preston portraying the teflon don’s wife, Victoria Gotti. The story follows Gotti and his son, who wants to leave the family business to start fresh on his own. Lindsay Lohan and Ben Foster were previously attached to star, but it doesn’t seem like they’re involved anymore.

Leo Rossi and Lem Dobbs wrote the screenplay, based on an original idea by John Gotti Jr.. Shooting is scheduled to begin in New York this September.

Personally I’d take this with a pinch of salt, but Latino Review is suggesting that The Tudors star Jonathan Rhys Meyers is in talks for an major role in Star Wars: Episode VII. If a deal is made, the actor would reunite with his Mission: Impossible III director J.J. Abrams.

No story details have been revealed yet, but Michael Arndt (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Toy Story 3) is currently working on the screenplay. We don’t know what role Meyers might play, but it’s possible he’d play the child of Han Solo and Princess Leia, or indeed Luke Skywalker’s son (they’re not sticking to the previously established post Return Of The Jedi mythology, so it’s impossible to narrow it down further).

Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher should all be back. Shooting will begin in early 2014 in the UK.

Writer-director-star Zach Braff may have had a bit of controversy for getting $2.6 million from Kickstarter and then scoring loads more cash from traditional sources, but he’s motoring forwards and putting the cast for Wish I Was Here Together.

He’s now announced that Kate Hudson will play the female lead in of the movie. He released the image above to accompany the announcement. He also revealed a bit about who she’ll play in a statement of Kickstarter:

‘The character of Sarah (my wife) needs to be pretty, funny, believable as a mother of two children ages 5 and 12 and an actress who’s skilled at both comedy and drama.

I fell in love with Kate Hudson when I first saw her in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. (She was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Penny Lane.)

‘Years later, we have become good friends. There’s an added benefit in already being close with the actor playing opposite you; a familiarity that’s real and isn’t forced. As we shoot in August, I loved the idea of jumping into this movie-marriage with someone with whom I’ve already shared lots of laughs.

Backers, I am honored and excited to introduce our leading lady: Kate Hudson.

Allow me to introduce our starting lineup thus far:
Zach Braff (me)
Kate Hudson
Mandy Patinkin
Josh Gad
Anna Kendrick
Jim Parsons
Donald Faison

P.S. We are about to be 40,000 people strong. Can’t stop smiling. Love you all,

Zach’

The film is about Braff’s Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor who can’t quite provide for his family. When his father (Mandy Patinkin) becomes ill, he reluctantly agrees to home-school his father’s young children, which forces him to learn a lot about himself in the process.

Bryan Singer has been keeping us all up to date with the progress of X-Men: Days Of Future Past by tweeting a series of images from the set. Now we’ve got a couple more. Above you can see the first image of Jennifer Lawrence in full-on blue Mystique make-up (Singer says she’s ‘vengeful’, so don’t expect her to be nice in this film), while below, Peter Dinklage discusses his role with Singer.

We still don’t know who Dinklage will play, although some are saying the moustache he’s sporting suggest he’ll play Bolivar Trask, creator of the Sentinels that cause all manner of trouble for the Patrick Stewart era mutants, and result in a bit of time-travelling to get James McAvoy and crew to prevent something happening that will cause the Sentinels to be needed in the first place.

The movie is out summer 2014.

Terminator: Salvation and This Means War helmer McG has signed on to direct the languishing action thriller Hunter Killer for Relativity Media, according to Variety. Antoine Fuqua and Gerard Butler were previously attached to direct and star, but they dropped out before they went on to make Olympus Has Fallen together.

The project is based on the novel Firing Point by Don Keith and George Wallace, which follows a new submarine captain who must work with a Navy SEAL unit to rescue the Russian president, and stop a rogue Russian general from starting World War III.

Jamie Moss (Street Kings), Arne Schmidt (The Express), and John Kolvenbach wrote the adapted screenplay. It’s not clear when it might shoot.

Chris Evans

Last July it was revealed that Fright Night’s Tom Holland was planning to adapt the Stephen King novella The Ten O’Clock People, taken from the collection Nightmares And Dreamscapes. At the time, it appeared Justin Long was going to star, with shooting due to take place last September.

That didn’t happen and now it seems Long is off the project, and according to Deadline, Chris Evans may sign up instead and finally get the movie off the ground.

The movie will bring the 1993 story up to date, with Evans in talks to play Brandon Pearson, who attempts to quit smoking, but uncovers unknown and terrifying aspects of reality that you can only see if you’re trying to kick the habit. He realises that many of those in positions of power aren’t really human, and are instead inhuman monsters.

The hope is to shoot in Atlanta this autumn.

Hollywood is very excited about China at the moment, due to the fact it’s fast become one of the biggest markets for cinema in the world. As a result there’s been a rush to include Chinese content in films, such as Iron Man 3, which even got a special cut for the country with extra Chinese scenes.

Transformers 4 is also keen to get in on the action and has promised to include a large number of Chinese actors, including one who’s being found via a reality TV contest. However now the first proper actor from China has been cast, Binbing Li.

There’s no news on who she will play, or indeed how China fits into the plot of the movie. The country is believed to play a fairly large part in film and scenes will be shot there. Bingbing Li will also be seen next year as Blink in Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, so she’s going to have quite a blockbuster 2014.

The non-Chinese cast for Transformers 4 film includes Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Sophia Myles.

It’s surprising it’s taken this long for anyone to come up with a movie about the Chilean miners who were trapped underground in 2010, but one is finally moving forward, with Variety reporting that Antonio Banderas is set to star in Patricia Riggen’s upcoming movie about the calamity.

The miners spent 69 days trapped underground after a cave-in, while workers on the surface worked around-the-clock the rescue them. Antonio Banderas will be portraying Mario Sepulveda, the charismatic miner also known as Super Mario. Martin Sheen and Rodrigo Santoro are also attached to star.

Patricia Riggen is directing from a script by Mikko Alanne and Jose Rivera.