Octavia Spencer, best known for her Oscar-winning performance in The Help, has been cast in David E. Talbert’s upcoming comedy Baggage Claim. Spencer will be featured alongside Paula Patton and Derek Luke in the Fox Searchlight project. The film is based on Talbert’s best-selling novel about a flight attendant seeking love in the skies in a 30-day, 30,000-mile search for the perfect man. Spencer has not slowed since her 2011 Oscar win. She will also be appearing in two soon to be released films including an untitled feature length directed by Diablo Cody, as well as in Snowpiercer, a thriller from director Joon-ho Bong.

Spencer is not the only one with her head in the sky; Dakota Goyo has just been cast in the thriller Dark Skies, which will be directed by Scott Stewart. Goyo will play a young boy who is being targeted for abduction by an alien disguised as a human. Josh Hamilton and Keri Russell have also been cast in the film to play Goyo’s father and mother.
Goyo is also known for his role as the younger version of Thor in Kenneth Branagh‘s blockbuster and more notably for his role in Shawn Levy’s Real Steel. The actor has also cast in Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah.

In indie casting, Dylan McDermott has booked another role, leading the action thriller The Freezer. In the Canadian production from director Mikael Salomon (cinematographer on James Cameron‘s The Abyss and Steven Spielberg‘s Always), the actor plays a retired assassin who gets abducted. McDermott has found a healthy career on TV, but as of late he’s been gearing up in some Hollywood turns, as he has The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Campaign and Nobody Walks all coming out this year and is currently filming the actioner Olympus Has Fallen.

Lastly Terrence Howard is continuing to stay busy, booking the lead role in a Los Angeles-based thriller titled A Girl and a Gun. Directed by Filip Jan Rymsza, the film already has indie starlet Juno Temple, along with Luis Guzman and Christopher Walken. Howard joins as a Hollywood hustler who is down and out, but then gets into a mysterious world following involvement in a mugging. The actor will next be seen in On the Road this fall, as well as on the festival circuit in The Company You Keep. Then he gets into action mode with Breacher, Dead Man Down, while also sticking with dramas in The Butler, Lullaby and Fellini Black and White.

Which casting more intrigues you?

Sources: Deadline/Variety