Although Chris Pine‘s good looks and big-time stardom made his “cameo” in Joe Carnahan‘s Stretch something of a liability, as far as these low-profile, in-development projects often go. His involvement in confirmed by the director’s recent tweet — and the supposed specifics have turned out to be the case — though a purported role falls to a different sort: Ed Helms, who Variety inform us is taking a central role.
In Stretch, a struggling chauffeur (Patrick Wilson) takes on a billionaire client who will help him pay off debts — after taking the protagonist “to hell and back.” It sounds menacing, so Helms gets off easy as a fellow driver, Karl. Could this shift work? His turn on The Office and in the Hangover series was never too far separated, really, so we can count on something with a sense of variety (speaking in terms of his performance) herein. Carnahan will produce alongside Blumhouse, the company which most recently made crime legal (and profitable!) in The Purge.
Something of a markedly different nature has also found its next star, with TheWrap reporting that Holliday Grainger (Great Expectations, Anna Karenina) has been signed for Kenneth Branagh‘s Cinderella — just not as the title character. That honor falls to Lily James (Wrath of the Titans, Downton Abbey), who takes her biggest role yet playing the stepdaughter of an unsavory type (Cate Blanchett) and love of a beautiful prince (Richard Madden, best known as Robb Stark on Game of Thrones). Falling into line with the former character, Grainger is expected to come aboard as one of the stepsisters.
With a script by Chris Weitz and backing from Disney, Cinderella is expected to begin shooting this fall.
Going small again, TheWrap also have news regarding the latest project from Lynn Shelton, Laggies. Finding a spot amidst the ensemble, Kaitlyn Dever (Short Term 12, The Spectacular Now) will take a (seemingly prominent) role in the tale of Megan (Keira Knightley), a “perpetual adolescent and late-twentysomething” who ignores the emotional needs of her fiancé (Mark Webber) to spend time with teenage friends (Chloe Moretz among them). The recent addition is to appear as one of these youths.
Sam Rockwell will also appear in Laggies, expected to begin production in a couple of months’ time.
Last but not least, TheWrap (once more) have been told that Josh Peck (Red Dawn) will co-star with Al Pacino in the music-centered drama Imagine. Hold on if everything about that prior sentence fills you with inconsolable dread, for its previously listed cast is an impressive thing altogether: Michael Caine, Annette Bening, Bobby Cannavale, and Jennifer Garner all tag along. In the helming debut of Crazy, Stupid, Love. and The Guilt Trip scribe Dan Fogelman, Peck will be seen as “a hotel valet who Pacino encourages to go after the girl of his dreams,” which sounds so silly and may prove to be exactly that.
How do you see these additions changing dynamics?