It’s still early, but I’ve got to say: Blood Ties is looking good. The cast with which Guillaume Canet will be working is pretty top-notch — Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, James Caan, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, and Zoe Saldana — he co-wrote the script with a talent (James Gray), and the actual story, meanwhile, sounds like a good amalgamation of beloved cop movie tropes.

To jump back and talk about casting, Deadline reports that the great Noah Emmerich is in talks for what I can only figure is a supporting role. Before telling you who he’s playing, however it’d be best to know that Ties — based on the novel Les Liens Du Sang — follows “a younger brother (Crudup) who has to ask his convict older brother (Owen) to go back into the underworld to help out the family.” Now, perhaps the description of Emmerich‘s character as “a guy who straddles the good and the dark side” makes a little more sense.

In less interesting territory, THR tells us that Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is the next actor to be wrangled into Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters. He’ll be starring for Thor Freudenthal as Chiron, leader of Camp Half-Blood (yes, really), the place in which “demigods are trained and protected.” (Percy Jackson is a demigod, for those of you not up on your Rick Riordan readings.) With Head, the cast now consists of Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, Brandon T. Jackson, Jake Abel, Yvette Nicole Brown, Missi Pyle, Mary Birdsong, and Nathan Fillion. Production should begin soon, as a release date has been set for March 26th, 2013.

Finally, Variety has news when it comes to A.C.O.D. — a film that’s been building a pretty strong ensemble, if I do say so myself. Right now, Adam Scott is leading the film, while Amy Poehler, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jane Lynch, Richard Jenkins, Catherine O’Hara, and Jessica Alba are all taking supporting parts. And, now, we can count Ken Howard (SAG President, White Shadow star) and Clark Duke (Hot Tub Time Machine) among the grouping. Not a bad pair of additions.

Stu Zicherman is making his directing debut on the film, which centers on “Carter (Scott), a man scarred by his parents’ divorce, who’s forced to reunite them when his brother gets engaged.” Howard factors in as Carter’s “amicable stepfather” caught in the familial discord; we can look forward to Duke‘s turn as the younger brother, who sets everything into motion with his engagement. Shooting is currently underway, with a 2013 release being the plan.

Does any casting here affect your opinion of the films at hand?