The Box Office News for April 18 to April 22

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

Actor Ryan Gosling is in talks to star in the box office film The Lone Ranger in the title role with Johnny Depp playing Tonto. The film isn’t scheduled to be released until 2014, though.

Actress Nina Dobrev (The Vampire Diaries) has joined the cast of the box office film The Perks of Being A Wallflower, which stars Emma Watson (Harry Potter franchise), Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief) and Paul Rudd.

Actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Undercovers) has landed a supporting role in the supernatural thriller called Odd Thomas, which is based on the Dean Koontz bestselling novel. She will play Viola, a waitress who raises two young girls after their junkie mother dies.

More casting announcements have been made for the much anticipated Hunger Games film. Newcomers Dayo Okeniyi and Amanda Stenberg will appear as Thresh and Rue. Newcomer Willow Shields will play Primrose “Prim” Everdeen. Actress Paula Malcomson (Caprica and Deadwood) will appear as the mother of Katniss and Prim Everdeen. Elizabeth Banks is in talks to play Effie Trinket, the pink-haired showbiz type who becomes the handler of Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence). Meanwhile, actress Leven Rambin (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Grey’s Anatomy) will play Glimmer, the District 1 combatant who’s pitted against Katniss. The film is expected to be released on March 23, 2012.

Thomas Jane and Sylvester Stallone will appear in the film Headshot where Stallone will play a hitman paired with a young NYPD detective (Thomas Jane) in a high-stakes investigation that leads from the dingy back alleys of New Orleans all the way to the power corridors of Washington, D.C.

Actor Billy Bob Thornton (Bad Santa) and Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives) will appear opposite each other in the new comedy film called The Baytown Disco that follows the foibles of three redneck brothers who get more than they bargained for after agreeing to help a woman get her son back from his seemingly abusive father. It is presumed that Thornton will play one of the brothers. The film also stars Serinda Swan (Tron Legacy and Breakout Kings), Clayne Crawford (A Walk to Remember) Thomas Sangster (Love Actually) and Megan Good (Brick).

Actor Joshua Jackson (Fringe) has joined the cast of the movie adaptation of Lay the Favorite, the story of a professional gambler named Beth Raymer who started off as a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas but soon rose to become one of the world’s best gamblers. After falling in love, Raymer soon begins to re-evaluate her life and the profession she has chosen. Actress Rebecca Hall (The Town) will play Beth with Bruce Willis playing another professional gambler.

Actors James Franco and Winona Ryder will both star in the independent film called The Stare, which follows a playwright (Ryder) who finds her mind beginning to warp as she struggles to launch her next production. She’s plagued by dreams and visions of being watched, but can’t decide if she’s at the center of a manipulative plot or simply losing her grip on reality. Franco will play one of the performers in the playwright’s production.

Actress Rebecca Romijn (Eastwick and X-Men) will appear in the Tyler Perry film called Good Deeds, playing a former corporate executive who prefers motherhood. Meanwhile, actor Brian White (Men of a Certain Age and Moonlight) has landed the lead role in the film, playing Walter Deeds, the brother of wealthy entrepreneur Glen Deeds (Tyler Perry) who becomes smitten with a single mother who’s down on her luck (Thandie Newton) after his relationship with his fiancée (Gabrielle Union) begins to lose its luster.

It has been confirmed by Warner Bros. that actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard will join the cast of the much anticipated sequel The Dark Knight Rises; but now we know their roles: Gordon-Levitt will play John Blake, a Gotham City cop while Cotillard will play Miranda Tate, a Wayne Enterprises board member who wants to help a still-grieving Bruce Wayne resume his father’s philanthropic endeavors.

Actress Isla Fisher (Confessions of a Shopaholic) is in talks to join the film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, joining Leonardo DiCaprio, who is expected to play the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby; Carey Mulligan (An Education) is to play Daisy Buchanan with Tobey Maguire set to star as well. Fisher will play Myrtle, a married woman having an affair with Affleck’s character. She is later killed by a speeding car, an event that leads to the book’s tragic ending.

Actors James Marsden and Claire Danes will star in the independent film called As Cool as I Am, which is based on the Pete Fromm coming-of-age novel about Lucy Diamond, the teen daughter of self-centered parents who married when they were teens. Marsden and Danes play the parents. The role of Lucy has not yet been cast.

Actors Rosemarie DeWitt (Mad Men), John Krasinski (The Office) and Olivia Thirlby (Juno) are all in talks to star in the independent film called Nobody Walks that is set over one week and follows a Los Angeles family who invite a young, charismatic artist into their home, only to find her disrupting their lives.

Actor Justin Long is joining the cast of the independent film called Lumpy. The film is about an Arizona wedding where the groom (Long) and bride (Jess Weixler) are shocked when their fun-loving best man, Lumpy (Tyler Labine), dies at the end of the evening. The newlyweds axe their honeymoon and return to Minneapolis to make funeral arrangements. It’s there that they slowly uncover that Lumpy wasn’t quite who they thought he was. Michael Landes and Shelley Long co-star.

Actress Catherine Zeta Jones is in final negotiations to join the cast of the film adaptation of the Broadway play Rock of Ages. She will play the villain of the movie, a part that was not in the stage production.

Actors Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Ben McKenzie (Southland), Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse) and Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) will provide their voices to the animated film Batman: Year One, which is an adaptation of the Frank Miller comic book classic. Cranston is playing Lieutenant Gordon, while McKenzie is Bruce Wayne/Batman. Dushku will be Catwoman, and Sackhoff is Detective Sarah Essen, a Gordon love interest. In Year One, a young Bruce Wayne is first starting out as a costumed vigilante, creating an early bond with Lieutenant James Gordon, whose importance in the tale makes it as much as Gordon’s story as Wayne’s.

20th Century Fox has scored the film rights to an upcoming trilogy of young adult science fiction novels by author Alexandra Bracken that are set in a time when a mysterious virus has left most American children dead. The few kids that have survived have developed psychic powers. One of them is a 16-year-old girl named Ruby who has been living in a government-run “rehabilitation camp” for six years. The first book, “Black is the Color”, sees Ruby joining forces with a small band of escapees who have a secret mission of their own. Anarchist organizations hunt Ruby for their own purposes, while a leader named ‘The Slip Kid’ who offers shelter to young people in danger turns out to not be all that he seems.

Actor Jonas Armstrong (the BBC series Robin Hood), British acting veteran Stephen Dillane and actress Parminder Nagra (Bend It Like Beckham and ER) will appear in the London-based thriller called Twenty8k. Nagra will appear as a fashion executive who returns to London from Paris after her brother lands up in jail after a fatal gang shooting. She then tries to unravel what happened to her brother and becomes immersed in police corruption and gangland danger.

Actors Julia Stiles, Taye Diggs and Melissa George will star in the film called Between Us that is an adaptation of the Joe Hortua off-Broadway play. The story follows two couples who were friends in school and whose periodic meetings conjure up rivalries and bitterness over unrealized ambitions that get waylaid by money and children.

Rather than appearing in the upcoming film The Great Gatsby, actor-director Ben Affleck is will helm and star in a film called Argo, which is based on the intriguing true story of how the CIA used a fake sci-fi film to rescue Americans during the Tehran hostage crisis.

It is rumored that actress Kate Beckinsale (Underworld franchise) by appear in the remake of the film Total Recall that already includes actors Colin Farrell and Bryan Cranston. Meanwhile, actress Eva Mendes and Rosario Dawson are the top contenders for a separate role in the film.

Actors Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin are in talks to star in the mob film called Gangster Squad that is about Mickey Cohen, the Brooklyn-born gangster who was sent to Los Angeles by Meyer Lansky to keep an eye on Bugsy Siegel. Cohen became a mob kingpin himself in the 1940s, and at one point fired rounds from two .45-caliber handguns into the ceiling of the Hotel Roosevelt lobby. Penn is in talks to play Cohen. Brolin and Gosling are in negotiations to play police officers who go after Cohen.

An offer has been made to actor Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) to take over the reins from Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) in the upcoming movie The Bourne Legacy. Renner would play a new character in the spinoff film. The character would be an operative from a covert government program that is even more dangerous than the Treadstone brainwashing program that hatched Bourne.

In addition to Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom returning to the box office film The Hobbit – to be directed by Peter Jackson – it has been announced by the director himself – that actor Ian Holm will be seen in the film as the older version of Bilbo Baggins (who will be played by actor Martin Freeman throughout most of the film.

Actors Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes will be sharing the screen again (they appear in the latter Harry Potter films as the evil Bellatrix Lestrange and Lord Voldemort respectively) in the adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic novel Great Expectations. Additionally, actor Jeremy Irvine (to be seen in the upcoming film War Horse) will appear in the movie as well, playing the part of Pip while Carter is in talks to play Miss Havisham. It is rumored Ralph Fiennes is in talks to play Magwitch.