Angelina Jolie is busy setting up her second directorial outing, Unbroken, and now she’s starting to put together the cast, with Skins star Jack O’Connell playing the lead role of Lou Zamperini, according to Variety.
The film is an adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s book about Lou Zamperini, a 1936 Berlin Olympics track star who joined the US Air Force during World War II. When his plane crashed he survived for 47 days at sea, got captured by the Japanese and ended up fighting for his life in a prison camp.
Jolie comments, “I’ve had the privilege of spending a great deal of time with Louie Zamperini, who is a hero of mine, and now – I am proud to say – a dear friend. I am deeply honored to be telling his extraordinary story, and I will do my absolute best to give him the film he deserves. I am grateful to Universal for making this film a priority.”
Joel & Ethan Coen are the latest to take a pass at the script, and they must have done a decent job, as Universal feel they’re close enough to shooting to set a release date of December 25th 2014.
HBO has become a big fan of all things gay in the last few years, such as backing Behind The Candelabra and commissioning a new series about a group of gay friends in San Francisco.
Star Wars: Episode VII isn’t due out until 2015, but it’s never too early to predict how much money it will make. It may seem pointless trying to work out the film’s gross now, but it’s actually quite important to Disney’s share price. With Lone Ranger possibly losing as much as $150 million for the studio, investors want to know whether the studio has a solid line-up for the future.
Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours) has an impressive track record on film, as every movie he’s made has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. He’ll be hoping to continue that with Trash, based on Andy Mulligan’s children’s novel.
In the last few years Hollywood has moved to a slightly different financing model than it used to have, where most major movies are now co-funded by various investors and companies who put cash towards a slate of films and then share in the profits. Usually though, these investors have little control over the finished movie or which film are included in the slate their cash is helping get made.
Halle Berry has said recently that she was hoping to do more comedy, and now she’s setting that in motion as 
Disney has been looking into its fairy tale back catalogue with live-action versions of Alice In Wonderland and the upcoming Maleficent and Cinderella, but now they’re eyeing another of the animated classics for the big budget treatment, The Jungle Book.