Steve Carell to Team with Gore Verbinski for Paranoia Thriller

This weekend audiences will have a chance to see Steve Carell doing what he does best, which is making us laugh, in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. He's also been branching out and showing his dramatic side, and his upcoming performance in Foxcatcher has some considering him as a possible Best Actor candidate. Carell is continuing to diversify, and now he'll take on a new challenge by starring in a new thriller from Pirates of the Caribbean director, Gore Verbinski.

Deadline says Carell and Verbinski will pair up on an untitled "paranoid thriller", penned by Steve Conrad, writer of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. There aren't any other details at this point except that production is set to begin next March.

Once this is wrapped, Verbinski will shoot two films for New Regency back-to-back, and both sound potentially interesting. One is A Cure for Wellness, an "elevated horror" that would reteam him with The Lone Ranger scribe, Justin Haythe. Really? They want to give it another go, eh? The second film is Passengers, also penned by Conrad and described as a large-scale comedy.

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Will Ferrell Takes the Court for Tennis Comedy 'Match Maker'

Will Ferrell has already taken on a soccer comedy with Kicking & Screaming, and a basketball comedy in Semi-Pro, but now he's set to conquer the world of tennis. Ferrell has agreed to take a lead role in Match Maker, about the iconic 1973 match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Remember all those years ago when Ferrell promised to stop making sports movies? Yeah, so much for that.

Steve Conrad (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) will pen the script based on Don Van Natta Jr's ESPN article “The Match Maker: Bobby Riggs, the Mafia and the Battle of the Sexes. Ferrell will play  the chauvinist Riggs, who came out of retirement to challenge the significantly younger King to a match, boasting that men players were far superior to women. The film will offer up a comedic look at the events surrounding the match. It was a national sensation with more than 50 million people watching it on TV. King won, but there's been speculation for years that Riggs threw the match in order to pay off some gambling debts.

Right now there's no director attached but if the plan is to have Conrad take the helm it will have to wait until his James Belushi biopic wraps up. [THR]

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Joaquin Phoenix, Adam Devine, and Emile Hirsch Up for John Belushi Biopic?

It's been three years since the last update on the very long-developing John Belushi biopic, back when Todd Phillips (The Hangover) was eying the director's chair and Steve Conrad (The Weather Man) was penning the screenplay. At the time, Zach Galifianakis, Jack Black, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Ethan Suplee and Tyler Labine were mentioned as candidates to play the late comedian, but the project never developed and it's languished in limbo ever since. But now it's suddenly been reborn, and the actors being eyed to play Belushi are more than a little surprising.

According to THR, Conrad will now take over as director, surfing the waves of his success writing Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. And with him comes some new possibilities for the starring role, with Emile Hirsch and Adam Devine (Pitch Perfect) having already met with Conrad about it. In what would be a truly inspired move, Joaquin Phoenix's name has also surfaced to play Belushi. This couldn't be a Belushi biopic without someone to play his buddy Dan Akroyd, and apparently Nelson Franklin (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) has is circling that role. Akroyd is also producing along with Belushi's widow, Judy Pisano.

Out of the choices, I'm perhaps most fascinated to see what Phoenix could do playing the late Animal House star, but the prospect of seeing the charismatic Devine land such a breakout role is intriguing. 

Warner Bros. is still backing this one and they're targeting spring 2014 as a start date.

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