Mary Elizabeth Winstead Enters 'The Cellar'; Sarah Wayne Callies to 'Pay the Ghost'; Judy Greer goes to 'Fresno'

Mary Elizabeth Winstead has joined John Goodman in Bad Robot's small-budget thriller, The Cellar. Formerly titled Valencia and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, the film centers on a "woman who wakes up underground after a terrible car accident and fears she’s been abducted. Her captor, a doomsday prepper, warns her that a terrible chemical attack has left the outside world uninhabitable but as tensions rise she decides she must escape regardless of the terrors that await outside."[Deadline]

So Into the Storm didn't kick up much dust at the box office, that won't stop ex-The Walking Dead star Sarah Wayne Callies from taking on another feature role. She's joining Nicolas Cage in his latest potential stinker, Pay the Ghost. Uli Edel, director of the awesome Baader Meinhof Complex, is at the helm of this one about  "a professor whose young son goes missing during a Halloween parade in New York City. One year later he begins to sense his son’s presence and uncovers clues leading to a vicious and vengeful ghost that surfaces each Halloween to abduct children". Callies will play a "whip-smart" environmental attorney and Cage's estranged wife. [Deadline]

Judy Greer and Natasha Lyonne will star as siblings in Fresno, the new comedy from But I'm a Cheerleader director, Jamie Babbit. The film follows "lonely but stoic lesbian Martha (Lyonne), whose sister Shannon (Greer), a sex addict with no impulse control and a long history of poor decisions, winds up back in Fresno cleaning hotel rooms with her. When they accidentally kill a guest, the sisters are forced to confront their unpleasant co-dependent relationship." Sounds a little like Sunshine Cleaning meets Your Sister's Sister, a combination I can definitely get into.

Read More

Johnny Depp Joins Kevin Smith's 'Yoga Hosers'

Remember when Ben Affleck was a regular face in most of Kevin Smith's early movies? Yeah, those days are long gone (they're still buds), but it looks like Smith has found a new celebrity pal in Johnny Depp. Depp makes a cameo in Smith's horror, Tusk, and now he's officially come aboard his next film, Yoga Hosers.

Described by Smith as a comic book movie, although it's not based on one, the film will also star Smith and Depp's daughters Lily-Rose Depp and Harley Quinn Smith. The rest of the cast is made up of pretty much everybody who is in Tusk:, Michael Parks, Justin Long, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez, Ralph Garman, Jennifer Schwalbach and Harley Morenstein, along with new additions Tony Hale, Natasha Lyonne, Austin Butler, Adam Brody, Tyler Posey and Jason Mewes. Of course Mewes is in this.

The story centers on  "15-year-old yoga nuts Colleen Collette (Lily-Rose) and Colleen McKenzie (Harley Quinn) who have an after-school job at a Manitoba convenience store called Eh-2-Zed. When an ancient evil rises from beneath Canada’s crust and threatens their big invitation to a Grade 12 party, the Colleens join forces with a legendary man-hunter from Montreal named Guy Lapointe (Johnny Depp) to fight for their lives." Depp is playing the same character as in Tusk and Smith is building this as a new franchise, similar to his original View Askew movies that spawned Jay & Silent Bob.

This sounds totally weird, but it will be cool to see Smith working in the action-adventure field, and with Depp riding shotgun this could be his biggest film in awhile.

Read More

Elisabeth Moss Enters 'Meadowlands'; 'Crouching Tiger' Sequel Adds Harry Shum Jr.; Katie Holmes Scores 'All We Had'

Cinematographer Reed Morano has done some amazing work in the past making films like Kill Your Darlings and Frozen River look incredible, and now she'll try and put those skills to use in her directorial debut, Meadowlands. Elisabeth Moss, Luke Wilson, and Natasha Lyonne are set to join the previously-cast Olivia Wilde in the psychological drama about "a couple, Sarah (Wilde) and New York City cop David (Wilson), who are dealing with the crisis of their son’s disappearance. While David loses his way, Sarah also places herself in dangerous situations following the calamity."

Hey, don't forget about the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel that has quietly been progressing over the last few months. The fifth book in the series serves as the basis for this one, with Donnie Yen starring as Silent Wolf and Michelle Yeoh returning as Yu Shu-Lien. Yuen Woo-Ping is directing, and the latest addition to the cast is Glee star Harry Shum Jr., taking on the role of Tie Fang. Production is currently underway. [THR]

Katie Holmes has picked up the rights to Annie Weatherwax's upcoming novel, All We Had, as a starring vehicle for herself. The uplifting family drama centers on "a mother and daughter who have nothing in their lives except each other. The mother sacrifices all for her daughter’s well-being and the chance for her to get into a great East Coast College to have a better life than she did."

Read More

AnnaSophia Robb Leads 'Jack of the Red Hearts'; Wendi McLendon-Covey Joins 'Doris'

* AnnaSophia Robb of The Carrie Diaries and Soul Surfer, is joining Famke Janssen (X-Men)  in the indie film Jack of the Red Hearts. Directed by Janet Grillo (Fly Away), the story follows a teenage con artist who tricks a desperate mother into hiring her as a live-in companion for her autistic daughter. Filming is underway now in New York.

* A whole host of TV actors have come aboard Michael Showalter's (The Baxter) new indie comedy, Hello, My Name Is Doris.  Wendi McLendon-Covey (Think Like A Man Too, The Goldbergs), Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is the New Black),  Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley) and Kyle Mooney (SNL) have joined the previously-cast Max Greenfield and Sally Field. Also featuring Beth Behrs of 2 Broke Girls and Mad Men's Michael Sommer, the story follows an older woman who is encouraged by a self-help guru to pursue a much younger man, who introduces her to the local hipster scene. 

Read More

Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul Join 'Eye in the Sky'; Tilda Swinton Goes Feline for 'The Infinity Engine', and More

More Cannes deals keep rolling in, including what may be Tilda Swinton's weirdest role yet.

First up, Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul have joined Pierce Brosnan in Eye in the Sky, a drone warfare thriller directed by Gavin Hood. Guy Hibbert's script "centers on London-based military intelligence officer Colonel Michelle Madden who is remotely commanding a top secret drone operation that aims to capture a group of terrorists in Nairobi. The mission suddenly escalates from a “capture” to a “kill” operation when she realizes the targets are about to embark on a suicide mission, which would result in the deaths of many innocent civilians. Meanwhile, American drone pilot Steve Watts is poised to destroy the safe-house when a nine-year-old-girl enters the kill zone."

Next, Tilda Swinton has starred in three films for Lynn Hershman Leeson (Strange Culture, Teknolust), but the fourth will have her playing a cat. That's right, an actual feline. A phosphorescent cat at that. In The Infinity Engine she'll be "a rebel talking cat that glows because she has genetic code from a jellyfish. The cat is on a search for freedom, enlightenment, and humane humans in the halls of a biotechnology company". Ever seen the famous glowing cat used to study HIV/AIDS? Well, this character is based on it, and yep that is really friggin' weird.

Anton Yelchin, Catherine Keener, Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men), Riley Keough, and Annie Starke (Glenn Close's daughter) have joined The Greens are Gone, directed by Peer Pedersen. The story centers on "a matriarch who is pushed to her tipping point over the disappearance of her son," while she has "a bipolar daughter whose reality is warped in magical realism."

Amanda Peet, Jason Mantzoukas, and Natasha Lyonne have joined the previously-cast Alison Brie, Jason Sudeikis, and Adam Scott in Sleeping with Other People. Directed by Leslye Headland (Bachelorette), the story follows “a womanizer who befriends a serial cheater, only for a romantic attraction to develop between them."

Read More