As the red carpets are rolled up and the screening rooms shut for another year, a final few nuggets of casting news reach us from Cannes. First, via The Wrap, is some news on “Rosewater,” the film Jon Stewart is taking 12 weeks off “The Daily Show” this summer to shoot (don’t panic, John Oliver will be hosting in his absence). Despite Stewart’s comedic day job, “Rosewater” is a drama, based on a true story about Maziar Bahari, a journalist who was detained in Iran while covering the 2009 elections there. The news: Gael Garcia Bernal has just been cast as Bahari. It seems awfully close to the start of shooting to be casting your leading man, but nevertheless Bernal has strong dramatic and political chops (“Fidel”, “No”), so this seems like a good pick.
Still in international thriller territory, The Wrap is also reporting the casting of Paddy Considine and Fares Fares (“Zero Dark Thirty“) in the upcoming Soviet thriller “Child 44,” to be directed by Daniel Espinosa. Noomi Rapace, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman and Joel Kinnaman are involved in the tale that follows a disgraced MGB agent (Hardy) in the 1950s Soviet Union investigating a prolific child murderer who may have connections going to the very top of the party leadership. Considine’s role is being kept secret, though Fares Fares will be ally for Hardy’s character. Shooting gets underway this summer.
So much for thrillers that take place in other times and places, and on to ones that take place inside your mind (*”Inception” trailer noise*). The Hollywood Reporter goes inside the mind of Rosamund Pike to bring us the news that she will be appearing in “Return to Sender” with Nick Nolte and Shiloh Fernandez (who you’re about to see in “The East”), where she plays a nurse unsettled after a date with Fernandez’s character, who is not what he seems. Pike, who is coming off her turn opposite Tom Cruise in the reasonably successful “Jack Reacher,” will follow “Return to Sender” with another thriller, “French Window,” alongside Josh Duhamel.
Another Josh, “Hunger Games” Hutcherson, has also got a psych-thriller lined up in the form of “Ape,” to be directed by Miguel Sapochnik and written by Jon Johnstone. It’s a tale of family secrets and incipient insanity that might be the step-up that takes the talented Hutcherson beyond the confines of District 12.
