The Box Office News for June 20 to 24

Here is your box office news for the week of June 20 to June 24:

Actress Evangeline Lilly (Lost) has joined the much anticipated two-part prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy The Hobbit that is being directed by Peter Jackson. She will take on the part of a new character – the woodland elf Tauriel. Meanwhile actor Barry Humphries, best known for his alter ego Dame Edna Everage, will play the the Goblin King. The movie is expected to be released in late 2012.

Actor Ian McShane (Deadwood) has signed to play one of the dwarfs in the upcoming movie Snow White and the Huntsman. The revisionist take on the fairy tale features Snow White (Kristen Stewart) as a princess who escapes her evil stepmother (Charlize Theron) with the help of a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) who was to have killed her but now trains the princess to survive and fight back. McShane will play Caesar, the leader of the dwarfs.  Meanwhile, it’s looking like UK actors Eddie Izzard, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan and Steven Graham might also appear in the film as the other dwarves.

British actress Andrea Riseborough (Made in Dagenham and Brighton Rock) will star alongside James McAvoy in the box office film Welcome to the Punch. McAvoy plays a London detective who forms an unusual partnership with his old nemesis, an armed robber called Red Diesel (Mark Strong) who has reappeared after five years absence. Together they try to uncover a conspiracy. There are no details on Riseborough’s character, though.

Actress Sarah Shahi (Fairly Legal) will play Sylvester Stallone’s daughter in the upcoming action thriller that is based on the graphic novel called Bullet to the Head. Stallone will play a New Orleans hit man who teams with a Gotham cop to take down the killers of their respective partners.  Meanwhile, actor Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones, Stargate Atlantis and the upcoming Conan the Barbarian) has reportedly been cast as the ‘bad guy’ in the film.

Actor Penn Badgly (Gossip Girl) will play Jeff Buckley in the biopic called Greetings from Tim Buckley, that will focus on the days leading up to Buckley’s 1991 appearance at his father’s tribute concert at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Church that launched his career. There is a second Buckley bio-pic in the works, based on the biography Dream Brother by David Browne, but that feature is still searching for its lead.

Actor Douglas Booth (Pillars of the Earth) will star alongside Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) as Romeo in the latest adaptation of the William Shakespeare classic Romeo and Juliet.

Actor Idris Elba (Luthor and Thor) will star in the sci-fi monster epic called Pacific Rim, playing the lead role of Sensi.

Actor Joel David Moore (Bones) has joined the cast of the box office film called Savages that already stars Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Salma Hayek, Benicio del Toro, John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Emile Hirsch. It is a crime drama based on the 2010 novel written by Don Winslow. Moore will play an expert computer geek who moves on from a Washington think tank to the marijuana business.

Actor Tom Wilkinson is in early talks to join the cast of the upcoming movie Lone Ranger, portraying a railroad tycoon in the Old West who plays a prominent role in the film about the masked Texas Ranger (Armie Hammer) and his trusty sidekick Tonto (Johnny Depp).

Actress Julia Ormond (Legends of the Fall and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) has been offered the role of Lara, Kal-El’s birth mother, in the upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel. She would like appear opposite Russell Crowe who was recently offered the part of Superman’s Kryptonian father Jor-El.

Actor Robin Williams looks to have joined the cast of wedding comedy called Gently Down The Stream, which will star Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Katherine Heigl and Topher Grace in a story of a dysfunctional divorced couple who pretend to still be together during their adopted son’s wedding for the sake of the birth mother.

Actor Marshall Allman (Prison Break andTrue Blood) has been cast in the family comedy called Jayne Mansfield’s Car. He will play the naïve son of Robert Duvall’s character. J ohn Hurt, Kevin Bacon, Robert Patrick, Frances O’Connor and Ray Stevenson also star.

Actor Jams McAvoy has replaced actor Michael Fassbender in the upcoming film Trance, which follows an assistant at an auction house who masterminds an art heist with a gang of crooks. Afterwards, he suffers a blow to the head and wakes up with amnesia. The problem is he’s the only one who knows where the painting’s location is. The gang begins to get suspicious and hire a female hypnotist to get into his brain. McAvoy would play the shady leader of the gang. (Showblitz and Dark Horizons)

Actors Rumer Willis, Dominic Purcell and Billy Zane are set to star in the thriller called The Ganzfeld Experiment that follows five psychology students who gather in a secluded house to investigate their potential ESP. Actors Taylor Cole, Ryan Donowho, Toby Hemingway, Holt McCallany and Laura Wiggins also star.

Joel Courtney (Super 8) has entered negotiations to join both a new adaptation of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and the supernatural adventure The Healer. Courtney will play Sawyer in the new adaptation of Mark Twain’s character. The other movie will follow an ailing father who takes his two teenage kids into the woods to renew the bond they shared before a divorce.