Reese Witherspoon’s next project is a Disney fluff piece called Wish List, about a girl whose wishes do not come true because the coin she throws into the well never reaches its bottom. Twenty-five years later, Witherspoon enters as that girl’s older self, a careerist who has lost the imagination of her childhood. The coin finally drops, and she is left to deal with the fallout from ten 25-year old wishes being fulfilled en masse.
The script, by Randi Mayem Singer, who brought us The Tooth Fairy (cringe), but also Mrs. Doubtfire (a more respectable piece of candy), was originally written for a male star but is being reworked for Witherspoon. Mark Ciardi and Gordon Gray, who most recently made Disney’s Secretariat, will produce.
-Having left his place on CSI, Lawrence Fishburne has signed on to Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot Man of Steel, which will be produced by Christopher Nolan. Fishburne will play Perry White, Lois Lane and Clark Kent’s boss at the “Daily Planet.”
-Ben Foster, who won a SAG award for his work on Six Feet Under and has been in such films as 3:10 to Yuma and The Mechanic, has been tapped to play the role of John Gotti, Jr. in Fiore Films’s strangely capitalized GOTTI: In the Shadow of My Father, written by James Toback and directed by Barry Levinson. Foster will star alongside John Travolta and Al Pacino.
-Newcomer Gemma Whelan, of last year’s The Wolfman and Gulliver’s Travels, will join the second season of HBO’s The Game of Thrones, where she will play the role of Asha Greyjoy (whose name is apparently being changed to Yara Greyjoy to avoid any confusion with the character Osha from season one). British actor Nonso Anozie is also joining the cast.
-Finally, word is that Russell Brand has been offered the role of William, the male lead in the directorial debut of writer Diablo Cody (Juno). The film follows a conservative, religious young woman who goes to Las Vegas after a plane crash that strips her of her faith, only to find it again in Sin City. There are no confirmed reports of who might play the young lead, but rumor has it that Julianne Hough, a contestant from Dancing with the Stars is in the running.
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