Tim Burton‘s "Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children" is now accepting enrollment. Eva Green is already aboard, and now Asa Butterfield ("Hugo," "Ender’s Game") is being eyed to join her. Based on the book by Ransom Rigg, the story follows "a teenager who must help protect a group of orphans with special powers from creatures out to get them." Production will begin in February. [The Wrap]
Liam Neeson is joining "Ted 2" because… why not. He’ll join Morgan Freeman in Seth MacFarlane‘s sequel to his comedy smash that will hopefully be funnier than his Oscar gig and "A Million Ways To Die In The West." [EW]
Michael Pena will join Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain in Ridley Scott‘s "The Martian." Based on the book by Andy Weir, the film centers on "an astronaut who becomes stranded on Mars and must figure out how to stay alive long enough to get back home." [Variety]
The cast of David Gordon Green‘s "Our Brand Is Crisis" keeps getting more impressive. "The Leftovers" and "Compliance" star Ann Dowd is joining Sandra Bullock, Anthony Mackie and Scoot McNairy in a movie "which focuses on the use of American political campaign strategies in South America." Cameras roll this fall. [Variety]
There’s going to be another "Frankenstein" movie besides the one with Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy. Xavier Samuel will play the titular monster in a film from "Candyman" director Bernard Rose. Danny Huston, Carrie-Anne Moss and Tony Todd also star in this version "set in present-day Los Angeles and told from the perspective of Adam/The Monster (Samuel), who is created by a husband-and-wife team of eccentric scientists only to be met with nothing but aggression and violence from the world around him." [Deadline]
Sarah Gadon ("Cosmopolis," "Enemy") is joining Jamie Dornan and Aaron Paul in "The 9th Life Of Louis Drax." The Alexandre Aja directed movie is about "a young boy who suffers a near-fatal fall on his ninth birthday. A psychologist probing into the accident is drawn into a mystery that tests the boundaries of fantasy and reality." Production starts in October. [Deadline]
Brewing for a longtime now, horror/western film "Bone Tomahawk" is back in the saddle with Matthew Fox and Patrick Wilson joining Kurt Russell and Richard Jenkins. S. Craig Zahler wrote the script and will direct the movie about "four men who attempt to rescue a group of captives from a band of cannibalistic troglodytes that live beyond the edge of civilization." Hopefully filming starts soon. [Variety]
Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kate Bosworth, Dave Bautista, and Gina Carano will all get a chance to work with Robert De Niro in "Bus 657." Scott Mann will direct a pretty cheesy sounding thriller about "a father without the means to pay for his daughter’s medical treatment. As a last resort, he partners with a greedy co-worker to rob a casino and the two hijack a bus full of hostages and things go awry." Filming starts in a couple of weeks. [Deadline]
"Game Of Thrones" star Natalie Dormer has come aboard "Patient Zero." Stefan Ruzowitzky is directing the thriller about "an unprecedented global pandemic that causes the evolution of a new species. An aggressive form of rabies turns the infected into predators, addicted to violence. An inexplicably gifted human survivor with the ability to speak the new mutant language leads a hunt for Patient Zero and hope for a cure." [Deadline]
Barry Pepper is headed to Cinemax to lead "Trail Of Blood." The series "centers on a frontier preacher whose only child, a teenage daughter, is taken by the Harpe brothers, the first documented serial killers in U.S. history." Sounds preferctly dark and twisted. Consider our eyebrows raised. [Deadline]
