Happy Birthday, Houdini, You're Getting Another Movie Development, and More...
- Paul Giamatti and Amy Adams are in talks to join Tom Cruise, Mary J. Blige, and Julianne Hough in Adam Shankman's adaptation of rock musical Rock of Ages. What a strange karaoke birthday party this is turning out to be.
- Lorne Michaels is setting up SNL and Good Burger comic Kenan Thompson to star in Party Starters, a comedy in which What's Up with That would play the guy gets people up and dancing at weddings and the like. Is it too early for Razzie buzz?
- Easy A and Friends with Benefits director Will Gluck is in talks to direct an adaptation of Sex on the Moon, Ben Mezrich's upcoming book about a NASA intern's to steal and sell moon rocks online in an attempt to impress girls. What ever happened to the days of attempting to impress girls by getting drunk and proving you can still jump your height horizontally?
- In case you hadn't already figured, Jason Schwartzman is reportedly in the cast of Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, which already boasts Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Bill Murray. I am excited. (via)
- The Amazing Spider-Man hasn't yet even finished shooting, but screenwriter James Vanderbilt has already been hired to write the sequel. It's not yet clear if Alvin Sargent--who did an Amazing Spider-Man rewrite and also worked on the last two Spider-Man films--will return or if the 84-year-old will finally be allowed to stop writing the voice of a spider-infused high schooler.
- Ed Harris will play John McCain to Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin in the HBO original Game Change. Not the guy with the eyepatch from Battlestar Galactica?
- Sony and I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence are working on getting together a Houdini biopic. Hey, just in time for his birthday today! And just a little too late to seem original in the face of the movie where Houdini is secretly a spy and the two inexplicable projects about Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle fighting crime.
