Danny McBride is no stranger to stepping outside of comedy with Up in the Air, All the Real Girls, and more, but he’s now set to dive into something quite unexpected. The Wrap reports he’s in talks to join Ridley Scott‘s Alien: Covenant with Michael Fassbender returning and Katherine Waterston taking on a new female lead role. While the Eastbound & Down star’s role isn’t specified, the October 2017-bound film follows the crew of the colony ship Covenant as they come across a dangerous planet occupied solely by Fassbender’s David.
Speaking of Fassbender, after he dropped out of The Mountains Between Us and then Charlie Hunnam doing the same, 20th Century Fox is looking at a new lead. The Wrap reports his Prometheus co-sta Idris Elba is now in talks to star in the project, adapted from Charles Martin’s novel following a doctor and writer who must survive after their plane crashes in the wilderness. With direction from Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now), the studio is now looking at a new female lead after Rosamund Pike dropped out. Rest assured, we imagine it won’t make its February 2017 release date.
As Josh Boone puts The Stand on the backburner, he’s jumping to another Stephen King adaptation, Revival, and he might have already found his star. EW reports that Samuel L. Jackson is currently circling the role of Charles Jacobs in the film, which follows the preacher of a small town who “begins experimenting with the supernatural using electricity after his wife and child are killed in an accident.” We’ll have to wait for confirmation, but considering it is Boone’s next film, imagine it to come soon.
After impressing in the relatively overlooked Danny Collins early last year, Al Pacino has now found his next role. THR reports he’ll be joining Barkhad Abdi, Melanie Griffith, and Evan Peters in Where the White Man Runs Away. Coming from director Bryan Buckley (The Bronze)m it tells the real-life story of journalist Jay Bahadur (Peters) as he ventures to Somalia. Pacino takes on the fictitious turn as a “Vietnam War correspondent whose passion for telling the uncensored truth far exceeds the battlefield.” Production kicks off shortly in New York before heading to South Africa.
Lastly, following last fall’s Taj Mahal, another drama surrounding the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai is also moving forward. Deadline reports that Dev Patel, Armie Hammer Nazanin Boniadi, Teresa Palmer, Kunal Nayyar, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Anupam Kher are in talks to join Hotel Mumbai. Anthony Maras, co-writer of the film with John Collee, will direct the film, which finds its source material in the documentary Surviving Mumbai, depicting the event which lasted 68 hours and resulted in 31 deaths.
Which of the above projects are you most looking forward to?