Sure Shots: Romeo & Juliet; Ed Zwick; Roland Emmerich to direct Asteroids?

* Only 14 years old, Kodi Smit-McPhee has already starred in two fantastic adaptaions of some tough material. He made his debut in The Road back in 2008, and followed that up with vampire flick, Let Me In. Not a bad way to start, but he's far from finished. Variety reports that he's in talks to play Benvolio in Carlo Carlei's version of Romeo & Juliet. Hailee Steinfeld(True Grit) is set to play Juliet, with Ed Westwick(J. Edgar) and Holly Hunter(Broadcast News) also confirmed. Julian Fellowes(Gosford Park) wrote the script, with filming set to kick off this summer in Italy.

* Ed Zwick has been around a long time, kicking off his directing career with 1986's About Last Night. One thing he's never really been is a helmer of big franchise flicks, but that could be about to change as Deadline reports he's been chosen to direct an adaptation of American Assassin, based on a novel by Vince Flynn. The book is part of a series of books featuring unorthodox CIA agent Mitch Rapp. CBS Films has been trying to get a Rapp franchise off the ground for more than a year.

* The worst director ever(he's not but I can't stand his stuff), Roland Emmerich, has been offered the diector's chair for an adaptation of the video game Asteroids. Let that sink in for a second. The game about a little triangle ship revolving around blowing up rocks is going to be a movie. This isn't a new development, with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura coming aboard to produce it some two years ago. However Emmerich's possible hiring is new, and with his penchant for blowing crap up as stand-in for story, he seems like a likely choice. Vulture says that the plot would have the Earth already and humans living in far off colonies along benevolent aliens. That is until it's discoverd that their neighbors actually caused the Earth's destruction and are looking to terminate humans next. Let's hope this never gets off the ground.