Here's the latest smaller stories coming out of Tinsel Town...
While we already knew that the main stars of the upcoming The Thing prequel would be Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Death Proof) and Joel Edgerton (Smokin' Aces), news has dropped of a whole load of Scandinavian names joining the production. These include Dennis Storhøi (The 13th Warrior), Trond Espen Seim (The Frost), Jørgen Langhelle (Svik), Stig Henrik Hoff, Jan Gunnar Røise, Kristofer Hivju (Manhunt) and Jo Adrian Haavind. The movie charts the events that led up to John Carpenter's 1982 flick, with a team at an Antarctic research station discovering something in the ice, which comes back to life and starts killing. The movie is currently shooting in British Columbia and Toronto. (Source: Shock Til You Drop)
Aussie actress Abbie Cornish (Bright Star, Sucker Punch) has lined to a couple of decent roles in the last few days. She'll be playing the female lead opposite Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro in Dark Fields, which is about the invention of a designer drug that allows you to to access the full capacity of your brain. Inevitably though there is a downside, which Cooper's down-and-out writer soon discovers. Cornish's role is presuably the same one of Cooper's ex-wife, which Elizabeth Banks was recently rumoured for. The actress has also signed on for the Madonna directed W.E., a biopic about the infamous affair between Edward VII and the divorcee, Wallis Simpson, which led to his abdication so that he could marry her. (Source: Variety)
Billy Boyd (Lord Of The Rings) and Peter Mullan (Children Of Men) are in negotiations to star in the ensemble environmental actioner The Lion Inside, which Richard Jobson will direct this summer in South Africa, Kenya and Cameroon. And yes, that is the same Richard Jobson who used to present film programmes on Sky, before turning director in 2003. Penned by first-time screenwriter Jim Branchflower, The Lion Inside is set against the backdrop of illegal logging and wildlife poaching in Central Africa. (Source: THR)
Having run out of his own stories to write book about, former SAS soldier Andy McNab took to fiction, most notably with a series of book about the spy, Nick Stone. Whilst there have been plans for years to try and get the character onto film, there's now new impetus in the idea, as Hyde Park Entertainment have jumped onbarod with plans to turn the third novel in the series, Firewall, into a film called Echelon, which will hopefully be the start of a franchise. In the book, Stone is teamed with a female cryptographer to break into a computer facility before it breaches a secret global surveillance system. (Source: Variety)
Oscar winning writer/producer Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) is turning director, although not with Paranormal Activity 2, which he was rumoured to be making earlier this week (he'll actually only produce). Instead he'll be making Man & Wife, a Mr and Mrs Smith style action comedy about a seemingly ordinary husband who's actually a professional hit man, and what happens as his wife begins to suspect something is amiss. However as this sounds pretty much like this summer's Killers, it's difficult to see them making a film with such a similar premise. (Source: LA Times)
Filmnation has picked up the rights to Christopher Pike’s highly successful teen vampire series, The Last Vampire. The action-thriller series chronicles the adventures of Sita, a 5,000–year-old vampire who never aged past her teens. She believes she is the last vampire in the world until her creator comes back to kill her. The six-art series was originally published in 1994, meaning there's plenty of room ofr a franchise to cash-in on the current vampire craze. (Source: Press Release)