Robert Patrick is in negotiations to replace Bryan Cranston in Ruben Fleischer’s The Gangster Squad as Max Kennard, a laconic LAPD officer from Texas who enforces the law ambitiously. Cranston had to drop out due to a reported scheduling conflict with Ben Affleck’s Argo. Patrick joins a stacked cast that includes Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Michael Peña, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Holt McCallany and Emma Stone in a story based off the L.A. Times’ seven-part series “Tales From the Gangster Squad” penned by Paul Lieberman, which chronicled efforts by the LAPD to deal with a chaotic and corrupt Los Angeles by forming what was dubbed the Gangster Squad to keep the East Coast Mafia out of the city. [Variety]
Kevin Bacon is in final negotiations to play the villain in Universal’s R.I.P.D. for director Robert Schwentke. Bacon will join Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges in the feature which is based on the Peter Lenkov comic and centers on Nick Cruz (Reynolds), a recently slain cop who joins a team of undead police officers working for the Rest in Peace Department and tries to find the man who murdered him. Universal has already set a June 23, 2013 release. [Variety]
Rob Kazinsky (Red Tails) has joined Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim and Willem Dafoe is in early talks to join the picture. Written by Travis Beacham (Clash of the Titans), Pacific Rim is a creature feature set in the near future in which malevolent creatures threaten the earth. The planet must band together and use highly advanced technology to eradicate the growing menace. Dafoe is being eyed as a rogue scientist with expertise on alien creatures, while Kazinsky would portray a member of the team trying to defeat the invaders. Previously cast in the feature are Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam, Charlie Day and Rinko Kikuchi. Warner Bros. has already set a July 12, 2013 release. [Variety]
Summit Entertainment has acquired screen rights to John Huddy‘s non-fiction book “Storming Las Vegas” and attached Antoine Fuqua to direct. The film will tell the story of Jose Vigoa, a larger-than-life Cuban-born commando veteran of the Soviet army who found his way to Vegas in the 1990s at a time when casinos were trying to embrace a squeaky clean image. Vigoa and his crew embarked on a violent 16-month crime wave that targeted some of the town’s most prominent casinos. He was pitted against a 23-year vet of the Vegas police force, who was charged with tracking down Vigoa and his cohorts without letting the story make the papers and spoil Vegas’ image. [Deadline]
Rob Cohen (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) is attached to direct 1950, a film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning dispatches from the front line by legendary “New York Herald Tribune” correspondent Marguerite Higgins and said to be the biggest-budgeted film project to hit the Korean film industry with the producers penciling in $100 million for the production. The story centers on Higgins, who had to overcome sexism and bias in order to be able to cover the war, and her journey with an American platoon across the peninsula climaxing with mass evacuation of hundreds of thousands of South Koreans in the face of advancing Chinese and North Korean armies.
Production is expected to begin in May 2012 with a planned release date of spring 2013. Coen is currently preparing to begin filming I, Alex Cross, based on the James Patterson novels with Tyler Perry in the lead role. [The Hollywood Reporter]
