1.) With Charlize Theron already on board, Amanda Seyfried is now in negotiations to join Seth MacFarlane‘s Ted follow-up A Million Ways to Die in the West. The film is said to be a Western comedy in the Blazing Saddles vein, following a sheepish farmer (MacFarlane) who chickens out of a gunfight and sees his girlfriend (Seyfried) leave him. When he meets a notorious outlaw’s wife (Theron) who offers to teach him how to shoot, the farmer sees a chance to win back his love. [THR]
2.) Tommy Wirkola (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters) is heading back to his native Norway to film a sequel to his 2009 Nazi zombie movie Dead Snow. The original has turned into a bit of a cult hit, while the sequel will be released in both English and Norwegian. “We have a script that I am super excited about, which is bigger, scarier, funnier, more action-filled and gorier than the previous one, and I can’t wait to unleash another horde of undead Nazi zombies onto the world again,” Wirkola said of the project. [Screen Daily]
3.) Sandra Bullock will lend her voice to the Despicable Me spin-off Minions. She’ll play the film’s lead villain Scarlet Overkill, a stylish bad-ass super-villain hellbent on world domination. The film has been set for a December 19, 2014 3D release, though I’m much more excited to see what Bullock does in Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity, which is now set for a release this October. [Deadline]
4.) Mark Neveldine will helm the exorcism thriller The Vatican Tapes, marking the filmmaker’s first solo directing gig after co-directing such gems as Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Gamer and Crank. The script has been floating around for a few years with original director James Marsh (Man on Wire) leaving the project sometime between now and when he boarded it back in 2009. The story follows a series of events that unfold after a tape gets leaked from the Vatican displaying an exorcism gone wrong. [Variety]
5.) Martin Scorsese will serve as executive producer on the thriller Revenge of the Green Dragons from director Andrew Lau. Lau is best known for directing the Infernal Affairs trilogy, which Scorsese of course remade as The Departed. Based on a true story, Dragons is set in 1980s New York and follows two immigrant brothers who join the Green Dragons gang and quickly rise up the ranks and become notorious to the city’s police. [Yahoo]
