— Billy Bob Thornton will face off against Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in George Tillman’s action-thriller “Faster.” Thornton will play a cop, named, um, Cop, trying to track down Johnson’s character, a former getaway driver named Driver (sensing a trend here?…), out to avenge his brother’s murder. The third major role, an hitman named, you guessed it, Killer. From the sounds of it, this could go one of two ways – an interesting, minimalist thriller, like Walter Hill’s “The Driver,” or, more likely, a tiresome post-modern action movie like “Shoot-Em-Up.”
— Paul Haggis has confirmed, via a representative, that the letter that leaked earlier in the week, in which Haggis resigned from, and condemned, the Church of Scientology, was written by him. His publicist, Ziggy Kozlowski, told EW “Yes, it is his. It was meant to be private and it was leaked.” The recipient of the letter, Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, also told the magazine “It was a private letter between me and Paul. I’ve known Paul since I was a kid. It’s unfortunate to see it be leaked like that.”
— Danny Huston has joined the very strong cast of Robert Redford’s period drama “The Conspirator.” Huston will play the prosecuting attorney in the trial of Mary Surratt, the only woman tried in conjunction with the death of President Lincoln, and joins James McAvoy, Robin Wright Penn, Evan Rachel Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Toby Kebbell, Kevin Kline and Alexis Bledel. No-one plays blowhards better than Huston, so this seems right up his street.
— Production Weekly have announced, in their usual minimalist Twitter-feed kind of way, that Wayne Wang (“The Joy Luck Club”) will direct an adaptation of Lisa See’s novel “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” which is set to star Ziyi Zhang. The novel focuses on the life-long friendship, formed during the painful process of foot binding, between two women in China in the 19th century, one of whom becomes an aristocrat, the other of whom becomes a butcher’s wife. Interestingly, the book has been optioned by Florence Sloan, the wife of former MGM CEO Harry Sloan, and Wendi Murdoch, the wife of Rupert Murdoch.
— Val Kilmer and Emmanuelle Chriqui (“Entourage”) have been cast in “Georgia,” a war film to be directed by Renny Harlin (“Die Hard 2”), set during the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia. The story will follow an American journalist (Val Kilmer) and cameraman who become entangled with a doctoral student (Chriqui). In addition, The Guardian reported a few days back that Andy Garcia will play Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, and that the movie is being produced by an MP from Saakashvili’s party. Harlin says “I’ve waited a long time to find something with substance and reality. I want to make a film that says something about the human condition, and even if only a few people see this and feel its impact and its anti-war message, then I will have done something that’s important and I will be proud of it.” Apparently, there wasn’t enough substance and reality in the giant sharks of “Deep Blue Sea” for the Finnish helmer…
