I have two pieces of casting news for you today concerning two very different sorts of movies.
On one end of the spectrum there’s the sure-to-be-rough revenge flick PRISONERS that stars Hugh Jackman as “a small-town carpenter whose young daughter and best friend are kidnapped. After the cops fail to find them, his character takes the law into his own hands, kidnapping the man he suspects is responsible. But as his friend and daughter’s captivity continues, the carpenter begins to have doubts that he has the right man.” I say “sure to be rough” because of the fact that Jackman’s character is a carpenter, something that seems to have been repeatedly mentioned in conjunction with this project. And I’m honestly a little scared to imagine what Jackman’s character might do with some of those tools to learn what he wants so desperately to learn…
So while we muse on that a while, there’s also the point that Jake Gyllenhaal is now in negotiations to join as “the detective investigating the kidnappings and who butts heads with the carpenter.” A Jackman-Gyllenhaal face-off, huh? I’d be down for that – what about you? Think Gyllenhaal can handle it?
On the other end of the spectrum there’s Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of ROBOPOCALYPSE. Chris Hemsworth has been in negotiations to take the lead role for a while, and now Anne Hathaway has joined him in debating whether to take part in a story concerning “the fate of the human race following a robot uprising.” Tom Rothman, the CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment who both brokered the distribution deal between Fox and Spielberg regarding ROBOPOCALYPSE and recently stepped down from his position of CEO, will produce the pic.
PRISONERS is looking to start shooting in the beginning of 2013, while ROBOPOCALYPSE already has a planned release date of April 25th, 2014.
Not to start a flame war, but I still say that Anne Hathaway shattered my expectations and completely kicked ass in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. Would I have preferred Rosario Dawson? Maybe, but Ms. Hathaway did just fine for herself.