If being confused with a baseball player — one Casey Affleck takes a keen interest in — is his biggest problem, Josh Hamilton (Kicking and Screaming) ought to be doing just fine. Things must, in all likelihood, be pretty good for the stage actor, with Variety pegging him as the male lead of Scott Stewart‘s paranormal thriller Dark Skies; Keri Russell, as you might remember, was cast a few weeks back.

In the director’s scare-a-thon, these two comprise a suburban couple who “take matters into their own hands” when aliens invade and target their children. That, right there, is quite familiar to those who’ve encountered any story of this sort, but Variety’s description also throws in something a bit different: promises of “an alien disguised as a human and a boy tagged for abduction.”

If you’re still not convinced by the mixture of loglines and teases, the acting combination should do something; Russell‘s very good, while Hamilton brings a certain energy to his film roles — of which I don’t think there are nearly enough — that you don’t get from many actors today. (Look toward his three-minute work in Margaret, for a recent example.) With them, Dark Skies has a chance to rise above the genre dreck.

Next, Deadline tell us Josh Gad (Jobs) will be coming aboard The Internship. His role will be that of Headphones, “an anti-social engineer at the tech firm [Vince] Vaughn and [Owen] Wilson are interning at.” The name (and anti-social behavior) stem from his use of headphones as a way of avoiding interaction; the character “is never actually listening to anything.”

Shawn Levy is directing quite a few notable people in The Internship — such as Rose Byrne, John Goodman, Max Minghella, and Aasif Mandvi — which begins filming in August.

Finally, Variety also report that two more have been added to The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. CCH Pounder (Avatar, Orphan) and Aidan Turner (The Hobbit) are contracted to appear for director Harald Zwart, with the former playing Madame Dorothea and the latter appearing as Luke Garroway.

Mortal Instruments — possibly the first film in a trilogy, box office depending — is based on Cassandra Clare‘s young adult series of the same name. Both center on Clary Fray (Lily Collins), the newest member of a group called Shadowhunters — that is, “half-angel warriors” who secretly protect the world from demons. When her mother disappears, she and other Shadowhunters go to battle in the secret side of New York, Downworld, a place “filled with demons, warlocks, vampires, werewolves and other deadly creatures.”

Jamie Campbell Bower Jemima West, Kevin Durand, Robert Maillet, Lena Headey, Jared Harris and Godfrey Gao also star in the film. A release date has been set for August 23rd, 2013.

Is Hamilton an interesting lead pick for Dark Skies? What do The Internship and Mortal Instruments stand to gain with these additions?