Box Office News for April 11 to April 15

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

Actor Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire) will appear as General Zod in upcoming Superman film, Man of Steel.

Actor Josh Pence (The Social Network) will appear in the upcoming box office film The Dark Knight Rises as a young Ra’s Al Ghul. He will be seen in flashbacks.  Daniel Sunjata (Rescue Me) has also been cast in the film, but no details have been released on which character he will play.  Actor Nestor Carbonell (Lost) is also in negotiations to reprise his role as Gotham’s Mayor in the film.

Actor Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man) will star in the film adaptation the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel. The coming-of-age story revolves around a youth (Suraj Sharma) who is the lone survivor of a sunken freighter who winds up sharing a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a hungry Bengal tiger. Maguire is set to play a writer who interviews the adult Pi about his life-changing experience. Gerard Depardieu co-stars.

Actor Paul Giamatti has joined the cast of the big screen adaptation of the Broadway hit Rock of Ages, playing a sleazy band manager.  Meanwhile, actor Russell Brand (Arthur) is joining the cast as Lonny, the show’s narrator and a rock club operator.

Actor James McAvoy (Wanted and X-Men: First Class) will appear in the crime thriller flick called Welcome to the Punch that is about a London detective whose old nemesis, an armed robber called Red Diesel, reappears after five years absence. His return heralds the uncovering of a massive conspiracy.

Actor Bradley Cooper is in early negotiations to star in the remake of The Crow. He would play a rock musician who is murdered while trying to save his fiancée from thugs. He is then resurrected by supernatural forces and seeks revenge.

Actor Rufus Sewell (A Knight’s Tale) will play Adam, the lead vampire villain, in the upcoming box office film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. He joins Benjamin Walker, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Dominic Cooper in the film that is expected to be released on June 22, 2012.

Kevin Durand (Lost and I Am Number Four) is in final negotiations to join the cast of the upcoming film Cosmopolis, which is an adaptation of the popular Don DeLillo novel of the same name. The film stars Robert Pattinson as a financial whiz who risks his immense fortune by betting against the yen on one particularly chaotic day. His decisions eventually make him the target of an assassination. Durand would play his chief security officer. The cast includes Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche, Paul Giamatti and Sarah Gadon.

Actors Sean Penn and Christian Bale are looking to team for the war zone drama called The Last Photograph that revolves around a photograph that becomes the catalyst for a journey two men undertake through war-torn Afghanistan. Bale is expected to play a war correspondent who is the only survivor of an attack on a group of Americans. While Penn is expected to play a retired ex-special ops soldier determined to free a family member who has been kidnapped and the war correspondent agrees to travel the rough terrain to find them with him in exchange for the story.

Actor Hugh Laurie (House) will star in the film adaptation of the Lloyd Jones novel called Mister Pip, playing Mr. Watts, the last white man left on the war-torn island of Bougainville where he is asked to open a school. He reads the kids his favorite novel, Great Expectations and as they bond over the book, they shed some perspectives on their own difficult lives.

Actress Sally Field (Brothers & Sisters) will play dowdy, old Mary Todd Lincoln (Abraham’s wife) in the upcoming biopic Lincoln that is set to star Daniel Day-Lewis as the bearded, emancipating president.

Actress Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) will join Aaron Eckhart in the box office film called The Expatriate that follows a CIA agent assigned to track down her former CIA partner and lover (Eckhart).

Actor James Tupper (Men in Trees and Grey’s Anatomy) has joined the cast of the box office film Playing the Field that centers on a former soccer star (Gerard Butler) who is forced to coach his son’s soccer team and then has trouble resisting the demanding yet seductive soccer moms. Tupper will play the fiancé of Butler’s ex-wife (Jessica Biel) and the soon-to-be step-dad to Butler’s son. Uma Thurman and Catherine Zeta-Jones also star.