PHOEBE GALLAGHER
1. Unified Pictures, Savage Bunny and Bron Studios will produce Clark Gregg’s “Trust Me”. Gregg (“The Avengers”) wrote and will direct the dark comedy which tells of “a loser agent for young actor – and washed-up child star himself – who stumbles upon a brilliant 13-year-old prodigy (played by newcomer Saxon Sharbino) and then tries to close the mega-deal that will make her a star while managing her drunk volatile father.” The ensemble cast includes Amanda Peet, Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney.
2. Jason Bateman and DJ Nash (“Up All Night”) are teaming to produce a new sitcom for NBC. “Then Came Elvis”, based loosely on EP Nash’s life, is set in the ’80s and tells of “a family that finally comes together when the parents divorce. Told through voiceover from the adult son’s perspective, the series examines how, at thirteen, the son would have changed just about everything that was happening, but as an adult looking back, he wouldn’t change a thing.”
3. Dreamworks and Bill Condon are said to be zeroing in on either Joel Kinnaman (“RoboCop”) or Benedict Cumberbatch (“Sherlock Holmes”) to play Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the Dreamworks project that Condon (“The Twilight Saga : Breaking Dawn Part 1”) is directing.
4. Mike Vogel (“Cloverfield”) and Nestor Carbonell (“The Dark Knight Rises”) have joined the cast of A&E’s “Bates Motel”, based on the “Psycho” movies. ”Carbonell will play Sheriff Royce Romero, who has something almost sinister about him. Vogel will play Deputy Zach Shelby, described as “a completely engaging, attractive, intelligent sociopath.””
5. NBC has ordered full seasons of “Revolution”, “Go On” and “The New Normal”.
6. As previously reported, Kevin Costner is now a lock to star in the Luc Besson/McG directed actioner “Three Days to Kill”, about “Secret Service Agent Ethan Runner who discovers he’s dying and decides to retire in order to reconnect with his estranged family. But when the Secret Service offers him access to an experimental drug that could save his life in exchange for one last assignment, he soon finds himself trying to juggle his family, his mission, and the drug’s hallucinatory side-effects.”
7. Rutina Wesley (“True Blood”) is eyeing roles in two indies, “Last Weekend” starring Patricia Clarkson and “Angry Little Gods” from “Last Exorcism” director Daniel Stamm. ”Last Weekend is being directed by Tom Dolby and Tom Williams and revolves around the lives that continue to change in the last weekend at a family home. Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad) is producing. In Angry Little Gods, Wesley would play the fiancee to Mark Webber, who unbeknownst to her is playing a twisted game — a make-or-break competition that could make him his fortune or cost him his life.”
8. “Hellboy” himself Ron Perlman will star in the indy “Savage Mutts”, a Nika Agiashvili directed film about ”a recently released convict who goes on a revenge spree against the criminal underworld and his crime-lord brother”.
9. “Sopranos” and “Joey” alum Drea De Matteo is to star in “Stalkers”, a telemovie/backdoor pilot over at Lifetime about “Diane Harper (de Matteo), a hot-headed cop with a troubled past, and a polished DA who team up to bring a stalker, obsessed with her former lover, to justice.”
10. Topher Grace and Anthony Mackie have joined the new romantic comedy “A Many Splintered Thing”, “the story of a young man disillusioned by love who meets a breathtaking young woman at a charity dinner by pretending to be a philanthropist. Turns out that she’s engaged to a guy who doesn’t like her going on dates. Challenged by the chase, and egged on by his eclectic friends, he feigns a platonic relationship in order to keep seeing her as he tries to conquer her heart.” Chris Evans, Michelle Monaghan, Anthony Mackie, Aubrey Plaza, and Giovanni Ribisi are already onboard the film, which gets underway this month.
