Rigg joins 'Game'; Radcliffe grows 'Horns'; Moore takes on 'Outlander'

Jamie Campbell Bower and Lilly Collins star in The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones, the adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s fantasy book series that Screen Gems picked up for an August 2013 release. More casting came with the announcement that Lena Headey will play Jocelyn Fray, newly Emmy-nominated Jared Harris will play Hodge Starkweather and Godfrey Gao is Magnus Bane. Robert Sheehan, Jemima West, Kevin Durand, and Robert Maillet also are aboard.

Dame Diana Rigg (one of the many aspects of the old British series The Avengers as superspy Emma Peel), who will guest star on an upcoming episode of Doctor Who, has signed on for the third season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, Olenna Tully, the “Queen of Thorns” and matriarch to the Tully clan.

It had been announced over the weekend that Jessica Biel was to be cast as Viper in 20th Century Fox’s The Wolverine. Now word has come that talks with her went awry and she’s being dropped. So some sense of regret and/or relief is in order.

Casting news on Hunger Games: Catching Fire is quickly coming together, with its mostly young main cast interacting with many veteran character actors. Philip Seymour Hoffman has already signed on, and the now Jena Malone (Johnny Darko) has been added as well as Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction). Monk’s Tony Shalhoub is also close to signing on as well as Snow White and the Huntsman’s Sam Claflin. I totally expect Charo to get a role as well, considering how much this franchise is turning into a variation on the Love Boat. 

Daniel Radcliffe has been cast as suspected murderer and rapist in Mandalay Pictures adaptation of the Joe Hill novel, Horns. So, coming off his turn in The Woman in Black, Radcliffe is seemingly playing against type, which is good for him. The story follows Ig Perrish (Radcliffe), who not only wakes up with a raging hangover to find out that he not only is suspected of murdering his girlfriend -but has a pair of horns growing out of his head. He discovers his new head-gear has the power to make people confess their sins and give in to their most unspeakable impulses.  Alexandre Aja will direct from an adapted screenplay by Keith Bunin. 

Just days after announcing that Chronicle director Josh Trank was going to helm 20^th Century Fox’s reboot of The Fantastic Four, they announced that they’ve hired Jeremy Slater to write the script.  Slater appears to be the latest newest wunderkind in Hollywood after his horror spec Tape 4, centering around the mythology of writer H.P. Lovecraft, got taken up at Lionsgate. He also wrote My Spy, a teen spy comedy that Universal will produce with Jake Kasdan attached to direct. The next step is: are they going to reboot it to an origin story (and really, do they need to every time a studio decides to reboot a franchise? Older ones, like James Bond and Star Trek make logical sense, but I saw no reason to do that with The Amazing Spider-Man, though it does speak volume on how Sony sees its viewing audience; dumb and unable to process that Spider-Man is being played by a new actor) or just continue on, sort of ignoring the whole Tim Story version of the four superheroes? 

Ronald D. Moore (Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica) has another project on his very busy plate. Besides being attached to a Wild Wild West remake, a coast guard drama and a western series called Hangtown, he’s now involved with a TV version of Diana Gabaldon’s genre bending franchise book series Outlander. Her novels kinda defies classification, as she takes many genres and smashes them together, though at its heart, Outlander is a historical romance series with some science fiction elements (time travel) and high adventure where men beat each other up. Gabaldon’s three science degrees come in handy when she describes everything that happens in minute detail. It’s like George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, only less interesting. Just as long, I will add, but nowhere near as beautifully told.