Box Office News for This Week (April 4 to 8)

The box office news was very lengthy so it’s getting its own column for this week:

Relative newcomer actor-singer Diego González Boneta (Pretty Little Liars and 90210) will play leading man Drew Bowie in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages, working alongside Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin and others). Boneta got his start as a singer in Mexico.

Actress Lily Collins (The Blind Side and Priest) – and daughter of Phil Collins – landed the role of Snow White opposite actor Armie Hammer (The Social Network), who will play the Prince while Julia Roberts will play the evil Queen. The movie is due in theatres on June 29, 2012.

Actress Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass and Let Me In) is in talks to join the Tim Burton film adaptation of the classic TV series Dark Shadows. She is expected to play Carolyn, the daughter of reclusive Collins matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer). Meanwhile, actor Michael Sheen (The Queen and Frost/Nixon) is in talks to play Elizabeth’s manipulative brother Roger and young actor Thomas McDonell (the upcoming movie Prom) was cast as younger Barnabas Collins, to the older Barnabas played by Johnny Depp. The cast also includes Jackie Earle Haley (Human Target) as Collins’ servant Willie Loomis, Helena Bonham Carter (The King’s Speech) as Dr. Julia Hoffman, Eva Green (Camelot and Casino Royale) as the witch Angelique Bouchard and relative newcomer (but one of the new faces to watch for this coming year) Bella Heathcote as Victoria Winters, the governess of the Collinwood estate.

Actors Josh Hutcherson (The Kids Are All Right) and Liam Hemsworth (The Last Song) have landed roles in the much-anticipated film adaptation of the best-selling book The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Hutcherson will play Peeta Mellark, the sometimes love interest of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) while Hemsworth will play Gale Hawthorne, Katniss’s loyal friend. The film hits theaters on March 23, 2012.

Legendary actor Leonard Nimoy will be coming out of retirement to voice Sentinel Prime, the new Autobot in the upcoming sequel Transformers: Dark of the Moon. He will not appear on camera.

Relative unknown actors – Sam Claflin and Alicia Vikander – will appear alongside Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges in the film The Seventh Son, which is an adaptation of Revenge of the Witch, the first book in the Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney. Claflin will play Tom, the seventh son of a seventh son who is apprenticed to Spook (Bridges), a local whose job is to fight evil spirits and witches. But while Spook is away, the boy will soon have to face the powerful witch Mother Malkin (Moore) on his own. Vikander will play Alice, an enigmatic new friend of Tom’s who aims to help him fight the evil witch.

Actors Alec Baldwin, Marisa Tomei, Thomas Haden Church and Allison Janney are all joining the cast of the box office film called Lucky Them, which follows a female rock journalist who sets out to find her ex-boyfriend.

Will Smith and his son Jaden will star in the as-yet untitled futuristic science fiction adventure film to be directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Actor Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class and Jane Eyre) is set for a lead role in the upcoming film called Good Vibrations, which tells the true story of Terri Hooley, a man who many people call a punk rock impresario.

Actress Mae Whitman (Parenthood and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) is in final negotiations to join the independent coming-of-age film called The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is based on the 1999 coming-of-age novel by Stephen Chbosky’s, which follows the trials and tribulations of a 15-year-old shy and unpopular high school student (Logan Lerman) who writes a series of letters to a mysterious pen pal. Whitman will play Mary Elizabeth, a tattooed vegetarian who becomes his first girlfriend. Actress Emma Watson (the Harry Potter franchise) has the lead role in this film.

Actresses Catherine Zeta-Jones and Judy Greer have joined the cast of the upcoming box office film Playing the Field that stars actor Gerard Butler as a former pro soccer player who finds himself dodging romantic advances from soccer moms after he agrees to coach his son’s youth team in an attempt to bond with the boy. Zeta-Jones will play a hot newscaster, while Greer takes on the role of a lathered-up housewife. The cast also includes Dennis Quaid as a rival soccer coach, Jessica Biel as Butler’s ex-wife, and Uma Thurman as one of the mom’s after Butler.

Actress Meg Ryan will make her feature directorial debut with the film Into the Beautiful, which is described as a contemporary version of The Big Chill, following longtime friends who reconnect after years apart.

Actor Malcolm McDowell and actress Carrie-Anne Moss have joined the cast of the horror flick Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, which stars Adelaide Clemens (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Kit Harrington (Game of Thrones). McDowell will play Leonard Wolf while Moss will play Claudia Wolf. The film is about a teenager (Clemens) on the run from dangerous forces that she doesn’t fully understand. Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean and Deborah Kara Unger also star.

Actor Javier Bardem is close to signing a deal to play gunslinger Roland Deschain in The Dark Tower, the mammoth adaptation of the Stephen King 7-novel series that will span three movies and a limited run TV series in between each film. The premise is that Deschain becomes humanity’s last hope to save civilization as he hits the road to find the Dark Tower; but along the way, he encounters characters, good and bad, in a world that has an old West feel. Ron Howard directs a script from Akiva Goldsman with Brian Grazer producing. The deal itself is a complex one, almost unprecedented, because it calls for Bardem to star in the feature film and the TV component.

Actor Jay Baruchel has joined the upcoming box office film Cosmopolis, which stars Robert Pattinson as a financial whiz kid who bets his entire fortune against the yen on one day. Baruchel will play the shy guy who founded the company, and who acts as the trader’s conscience.

Actor William Fichtner (Prison Break) is in final negotiations to join Jodie Foster in the upcoming sci-fi epic Elysium.

Actors Clive Owen, Andrea Riseborough, Gillian Anderson and Aidan Gillen have all joined the cast of the box office film Shadow Dancer, which is based on the novel by Tom Bradby. The story is about a former female IRA terrorist turned informer. Owen and Riseborough replace Guy Pearce and Rebecca Hall who were set for the lead roles late last year.

Actress Maggie Grace (Lost) will reprise her role as the daughter of Liam Neeson in the upcoming sequel Taken 2.

A film based on legendary singer Dusty Springfield is in the works. The film is to be based on the Sharon Davis book called A Girl Called Dusty. Cast and crew have yet to be chosen.

In addition to Keira Knightley, Jude Law and Aaron Johnson being part of the upcoming adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Director Joe Wright (Hanna, Pride and Prejudice and Atonement) has announced that actress Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire) and actor Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) are now a part of the cast as well. It is also rumored that James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan may also be joining the cast. The eight-part novel deals with a 19th century Russian woman (Knightley) trapped in a loveless marriage who becomes a social outcast when she has an affair with the aristocrat Count Vronsky (Johnson).

Young actress Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) may become the next actress to play Juliet on the big screen as she is in talks to join the cast of Romeo and Juliet, which is being adapted by Oscar winner Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park.

It looks like actor Ben Affleck is “in talks” to play the role of Tom Buchanan in the Baz Luhrmann adaptation of The Great Gatsby, starring alongside actor Leonardo DiCaprio, as Jay Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway and Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan.

Actor Dave Franco (Scrubs – and brother of James Franco) has been cast to play a villain in the adaptation of the 1980’s TV series 21 Jump Street that starred Johnny Depp. His character will be Eric, the most popular kid in school, who also happens to be a raging drug dealer. Jonah Hill’s narc character befriends him to infiltrate the cool kid crowd. Channing Tatum plays another undercover officer.