NBC has set an April 4 premiere date for “Hannibal,” its hour-long crime drama chronicling the early days of Hannibal Lecter, the notorious cannibal/serial killer first introduced in the Thomas Harris novels “Red Dragon” and “Silence of the Lambs.”
David Slade, director of Twilight Saga: Eclipse and 30 Days of Night, helms the pilot episode from a script by Bryan Fuller, creator of ABC’s Emmy-winning series “Pushing Daisies” and one of Showtime’s most fun and creative offerings “Dead Like Me.”
“Hannibal” stars Lawrence Fishburne as Jack Crawford, Hugh Dancy as FBI agent Will Graham, Anna Chlumsky as FBI trainee Miriam Lass, Aaron Abrams as forensic investigator Brian Zeller, Caroline Dhavernas as profiler Dr. Alana Bloom, Gillian Anderson as psychologist Bedelia Du Maurier and Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Hannibal Lecter (pictured above).
“Switched at Birth” and “Desperate Housewives” star Maiara Walsh is set to join Amazon Studios’ “Zombieland,” a Sony Pictures Televisio-produced pilot based on the hit 2009 horror-comedy that starred Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone.
Written by original Zombieland scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the pilot picks up where the film left off, following a group of zombie apocalypse survivors as they attempt to stay alive in an undead world. Walsh will portray pretty con-artist Wichita, played by Stone in the feature.
Co-starring with Walsh in “Zombieland” are Tyler Ross as Chicago and Izabela Vidovic (Deadtime Stories) as Wichita’s younger sister Little Rock, played in the film by Eisenberg and Breslin respectively.
Walsh currently stars as manipulative bad-girl Simone Sinclair on ABC Family’s hit series “Switched at Birth.” The gorgeous 24-year-old previously played rich-girl Mandi Weatherly in Mean Girls 2 and as Ana Solis on ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.”
Anchor Bay has set a March 19 home video release date for Arclight Films’ Shadow People. Directed by Matthew Arnold,the creepy frightener stars Alison Eastwood as a CDC doctor whose research on SUNDS (Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome) leads her to a supernatural conclusion.
A new trailer has been cut to promote Shadow People and it is pretty damn disturbing, especially if you have ever really felt shadows in your bedroom closing in on you while you pray that the pressure they seem to be putting on your chest is just a massive heart attack brought on by years of bacon hotdogs and beer.
Nickelodeon star Danielle Bisutti (“True Jackson, VP”) has scored a role in FilmDistrict and Blumhouse Productions’ Insidious: Chapter 2, the eagerly anticipated sequel to the James Wan-directed blockbuster about a young married couple attempting to save their comatose son from demonic possession.
Wan returns to direct from a script by Insidious writer Leigh Whannell. Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson are also back, reprising their roles as tormented parents Renai and Josh Lambert. Production on the film began last month and is slated for release in August.
Bisutti, best known as Amanda Cantwell on Nickelodean’s teen fashion-drama “True Jackson, VP” and a story arc on FOX’s teen soap “The O.C.,” is coming off Universal 1440’s Curse of Chucky, the fifth installment in the outrageous Child’s Play franchise.
Screen Gems has released the first image from its upcoming adaptation of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, the first book in Cassandra Clare’s bestselling young-adult series about a teen who discovers her demon-slaying skills while attempting to rescue her mother from an evil entity.
The shot features pretty French actress Jemima West as Shadowhunter Isabelle Lightwood (posted above). Shadowhunters, known collectively as Nephilim, are age-old human demon-slayers born with angel blood, dedicated to protecting mortals.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is directed by Harald Zwart (Karate Kid 2010) and stars Lily Collins as protagonist Clary Fray. Co-stars include Lena Headey (”Game of Thrones”), Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“Dracula”), Jamie Campbell Bower (Twilight: Breaking Dawn) and Kevin Durand (“LOST”).
Posted above is the first image from Eli Roth’s new cannibal frightener The Green Inferno. The film, written by Roth and his Aftershockcollaborator Guillermo Amoedo, marks Roth’s return to directing since 2007’s Hostel 2.
The film’s synopsis reads:
A group of student activists from New York City travel to the Amazon to protect a dying tribe, but crash in the jungle and are taken hostage by the very natives they saved.
Shot in Peru and Chile, The Green Inferno stars Chilean hottie Lorenza Izzo (Aftershock), Ariel Levy (Aftershock), Daryl Sabara (Spy Kids), Magda Apanowicz (Snowmaggedon), pop singer Sky Ferreria and stunner Kirby Bliss Blanton (Project X), who appears to be the first course.
Dakota Fanning and is set to star in documentary filmmaker Amy Berg’s (West of Memphis, Deliver Us from Evil) feature film debut Every Secret Thing, an adaptation of Laura Lippman’s 2004 mystery novel about two 11-year-old girls who are convicted of murdering a baby and imprisoned until they turn 18.
Every Secret Thing picks up seven years after Alice Manning and Ronnie Fuller’s conviction, finding them once again at the center of a police investigation over the sudden disappearance of neighborhood children. Fanning plays Ronnie Fuller opposite Australian actress Danielle Macdonald’s Alice Manning.
Cameras roll on the female-driven film on March 25 in New York. Co-stars include Diane Lane as one of the girl’s mother and Elizabeth Banks as the lead police officer determined to crack the case. The script is penned by Nicole Holofcener, writer and director of the hilarious must-see comedies Friends with Money and Walking and Talking.
Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron (Monster, 2003) is set to star in and produce French director Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s English-language debut Dark Places, an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s best selling 2009 novel of the same name.
According to the Exclusive Media press release:
Charlize Theron will play Libby Day, a woman who, at the age of 7, survives the massacre of her family and testifies against her brother as the murderer.
Twenty-five years later, a group obsessed with solving notorious crimes confronts her with questions about the horrific event.
In Flynn’s novel, Libby grows to become a total mess and agrees to help the group, called The Kill Club, re-investigate the crime in a scheme to profit from her tragedy. Theron is always fun to stare at, but she especially kills it when portraying damaged people (i.e. Aileen Wuornos in Monster, Mavis Gary in Young Adult).
Theron, who is coming off Snow White and the Huntsman and Prometheus, will next be seen in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, the fourth installment in the franchise made famous by Academy Award winning actor and blow-job enthusiast Mel Gibson.
Eighteen-year-old Saoirse Ronan is joining Christina Hendricks and Eva Mendez in How to Catch a Monster, a sci-fi thriller written and directed by actor Ryan Gosling (Drive), who co-produces through his Phantasma Films with Marc Platt Productions and Bold Films.
Described as a modern day fairy tale with elements of “fantasy noir and suspense,” How to Catch a Monster finds Hendricks playing a fetish model and mother of two, who follows one of her sons to a secret under water city. Costars include Matt Smith (“Dr. Who”), Ben Mendelsohn (Dark Knight Rises) and Rob Zabrecky.
Ronan is best known for playing an abducted teen in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones and for her role as a teen assassin in Joe Wright’s Hanna. She’ll next be seen as Gemma Arterton’s vampire daughter in Neil Jordan’s Byzantium and as Melanie Stryder in Andrew Niccol’s adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s The Host.
The truth is out there… and so is Gillian Anderson. The “X-Files” star has got a string of upcoming projects sure to interest genre fans, including the alien thriller I’ll Follow You Down, the zombie horror-comedy Curse of the Buxom Strumpet and a story arc on NBC’s new “Hannibal” series as Dr. Lectar’s psychologist.
Now comes word that Anderson has been cast alongside Ben Kingsley in director and co-writer Jon Wright’s new robot-apocalypse thriller Our Robot Overlords. Budgeted at $21 million and co-written by Mark Stay, the story is set three-years after a robot invasion forces survivors to live in hiding.
It’s a fantastic script set in the future about a woman who has four or five kids living with her in a world run by robots and they break out in search of the father who’s gone missing.
Our Robot Overlords is slated to go into production in May. To keep up with the film’s progress, peep its Twitter feed.
