Matt Smith Joins 'Patient Zero'; Bryce Dallas Howard Eyes 'Pete's Dragon'; Martin Freeman does 'The Taliban Shuffle'

 Ex-Doctor Who star Matt Smith, who will be seen next year in Terminator: Genisys, is in talks to join Natalie Dormer in Patient Zero. Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky (Deadfall), the film takes place after a global pandemic creates a new species driven by violence. One human survivor immune to the disease and able to communicate with the infected must locate patient zero and find a cure to save his wife and all of humanity. [Deadline]

Bryce Dallas Howard (The Help) may join the Pete's Dragon remake written and directed by David Lowery (Ain't them Bodies Saints). The non-musical live-action/animated hybrid centers on an abused orphan who befriends an invisible dragon. Robert Redford, Oona Lawrence, and Oakes Fegley star, with Howard in talks to play a skeptical forest ranger. [THR]

Bilbo Baggins...er, Martin Freeman, will do The Taliban Shuffle with Tina Fey. Margot Robbie is also aboard the comedy film based on Kim Barker's memoir about her stint "as a fish-out-of-water in Kabul, filing stories about militants, being a woman in wartime Iraq and Pakistan, dealing with boredom interspersed with dashes of violence and the promiscuous war correspondent culture." Freeman would play Fey's love interest, a Scottish photojournalist. John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (Crazy Stupid Love) are directing.

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Kim Basinger Joins 'The Nice Guys', Margot Robbie Dances 'The Taliban Shuffle'

Shane Black's The Nice Guys already stars Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, Keith David, Beau Knapp, and Matt Bomer, but now it's getting a female touch with the addition of Kim Basinger. It's an L.A. Confidential reunion for Basinger and Crowe, with her now playing a dubious chief justice in the 1970s-set film about a Los Angeles "private eye and a hired leg breaker who must work together to solve the case of a missing girl and the seemingly unrelated death of a porn star." [THR]

It seems Margot Robbie is up for just about everything right now, and while we wait to see if she takes a role in DC's Suicide Squad, she's eying a comedic role opposite Tina Fey. The Wolf of Wall Street actress may join The Taliban Shuffle, a comedy adaptation of Kim Barker's memoir about her time as "as a fish-out-of-water in Kabul, filing stories about militants, being a woman in wartime Iraq and Pakistan, dealing with boredom interspersed with dashes of violence and the promiscuous war correspondent culture." Fey would play Barker, with Robbie as a gorgeous and competitive news anchor who befriends her. If Robbie signs on it would reteam her with Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, her directors on the heist film, Focus, which stars Will Smith. [THR]

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