As George Lucas plans to step back into retirement, Kathleen Kennedy has been named as Co-Chair of Lucasfilm. Lucas will stay on as Co-Chair and will continue as CEO. Micheline Chau will continue as COO and president, overseeing daily operations. Kennedy, who has had a long professional relationship with Steven Spielberg (and working with Lucas on the Indiana Jones series), will step down as the Kennedy/Marshall Co., which she heads with her husband Frank Marshall. Former president of the Producers Guild of America, Kennedy revealed that it’s too early to discuss any major changes or directions that she might take the company. According to THR, Kennedy remarked, “George and I have to sit down and talk
about the various divisions, what the company is doing. I’m
not going in to invent anything new.”
20th Century Fox has purchased the rights to S.J. Kincaid‘s upcoming futuristic young adult thriller trilogy, Insignia. “Set during World War III, story centers around a 14-year-old gamer who enrolls in an elite military training academy. Before long he discovers that the military intends to turn him into a superhuman fighter by installing a computer in his brain.”
Michael K. Williams who is slated to play Ol’ Dirty Bastard in the upcoming bio pic, Dirty White Boy, has revealed that the Wu-Tang Clan might very well portray themselves in the film which chronicles ODB and his relationship with Jarred Weisfeld, a Caucasian who became the rapper’s manager in the early 2000s. According to Williams, the producers “have no desire to cast any actors as the Wu-Tang,” although there has been no confirmation from RZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Oli Grant, Method Man, Masta Killa or Inspectah Deck.
Based on the comic by Jimmy Palmiotti and Phil Noto, Far West might be headed to the cinema with Len Wiseman (Total Recall, Underworld) overseeing the project as a producer. “Set in a near-future Los Angeles where an electromagnetic pulse bomb causes all technology to stop working. In this hostile environment, a disgraced former LAPD detective must rescue a kidnapped mayor with only a horse and a sword.”
Ben Schwartz is the latest actor to join Brad Furman‘s online gambling thriller, Runner, Runner. Schwartz, who co-stars on Showtime’s House of Lies and recurs on NBC’s Parks and Recreation will join previously announced cast members Ben Affleck, Justin Timberlake, Gemma Arterton, Anthony Mackie and Sam Palladio. Most recently Schwartz was also cast as one of the lead voices in Fox’s animated pilot Working Class Hero alongside Patton Oswalt.
Big Bang Theory‘s Bernadette Rostenkowski, Melissa Rauch, has joined the cast of Mad Men creator Matt Weiner‘s directorial debut You Are Here opposite Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis and Amy Poehler. According to THR, Rausch, “will play an over-coiffed and over-dressed call girl in the movie.”
Michael Emerson, who creeped out audiences of Lost as Benjamin Linus, will join the ensemble of Woody Allen‘s next film while on hiatus from his current series, Person of Interest, joining Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale and Bradley Cooper.
