Michael C. Hall joins 'Pete's Dragon'; Aubrey Plaza meets 'Dirty Grandpa'; Bruce Willis plots 'Bandits'

A non-musical remake of Disney's live-action/animated film Pete's Dragon may not seem like one that would demand a ton of talent around it but that's exactly what it's got. David Lowery's film already stars Robert Redford, Bryce Dallas Howard, Wes Bentley, Oakes Fegley, and Oona Lawrence, and now you can add Dexter's Michael C. Hall. The film centers on an orphan boy who befriends a giant imaginary dragon. [Variety]

Last year Aubrey Plaza starred in the extremely raunchy comedy The To Do List, so she should be a perfect fit for a film titled Dirty Grandpa. She joins Zac Efron, Robert De Niro, and Zoey Deutch in the Dan Mazer-directed comedy about "an uptight twenty-something (Efron) who embarks on a road trip before his wedding to bond with his recently widowed grandfather (De Niro) only to find that his grandpa is a foul-mouthed lunatic on a mission to get laid during Spring Break." That sounds kind of great, actually. [Deadline]

Bruce Willis is finally bringing Elmore Leonard's book Bandits to the big screen. Years ago he had optioned the rights only to have it lapse and get picked up by Quentin Tarantino along with a bunch of other Leonardo novels. He, of course, ended up adapting Rum Punch into Jackie Brown while the other books again lapsed. Now Bandits is back in Willis' control and he's hired Mitch Glazer (Passion Play) to write the script. The dark comedy's complicated plot follows "Jack Delaney, an ex-con who is struggling to stay on the straight path as he dresses up corpses as a mortician in his brother’s funeral home. Things get much more exciting for him when he meets a gorgeous lapsed nun who is just back from Nicaragua where she took care of lepers and tried to keep the contras from hacking them up with machetes. She wants to smuggle a beautiful young Nicaraguan woman – who contracted leprosy–because the woman’s ex-lover, a Somoza-type colonel, wants to kill her for possibly infecting him. That same guy is raising millions from rich Americans to take back to the contras and the bored mortician finds his own cause, stiffing the colonel and getting away with a fortune with the help of the nun and an ex-cop." [Deadline]

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Cancelled Starz Series 'Magic City' is Now a Movie with Bruce Willis and Bill Murray

Starz gave their Miami mobster drama Magic City a couple of seasons before giving it the ax, the series never really getting off the ground despite a talented cast. The show starred Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Olga Kurylenko, Kelly Lynch, and a hammy Danny Huston in the Mitch Glazer-created series set in the late 1950s at a glamorous hotel post-Cuban Revolution. And apparently somebody thinks the premise is just too good to let die because Magic City is now to become a feature film, with some pretty big names coming aboard to make it happen.

According to Deadline, Bruce Willis (!), and Bill Murray (!!) are joining the Magic City film, which Glazer will write and direct with Brett Ratner on board to produce. Wha?!? The first thought in your mind is probably "Oh, I can't get a Deadwood movie or The Wire but Magic City!?!?!?". I feel your pain. Anyway, the story takes place in 1962 when Morgan's powerful hotel owner contends with gangsters, spies, socialites, slimy politicians, Cuban freedom fighters armed by the CIA, and a possible plot to assassinate Castro. Good lord this sounds like a mess. Willis will sign on to anything so his involvement isn't a big deal, but what about the notoriously picky Murray? He and Glazer are buds having worked on Scrooged, the atrocious Passion Play, and the upcoming Middle Eastern rock music comedy (!!!!) Rock the Kasbah, which also features Willis.

So there ya go. The original cast is expected to return whenever production gears up.

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