Casting News: Megan Fox in Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator; Jason Momoa Gets a Stallone Headshot; Hailee Steinfeld's Juliet Finds Her Romeo
Posted 06.22.11 by Ryan
Several projects are lining up new cast members, including The Dictator, the latest comedy from actor Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles, who previously collaborated on Borat and Bruno.
THR reports that Megan Fox and John C. Reilly are making cameos in the movie, though what roles they will be playing are being kept secret.
The Dictator stars Cohen in dual roles as, clearly, a dictator, one that is deposed and ends up in the U.S., and also the goat herder who replaces him. The first official photo showed Cohen in his Dictator outfit, while new set photos see Cohen cheat during a Olympic-style running event by pulling out a gun, and another sees Cohen possibly as the goat herder character running down a New York street with a plate of food.
The Dictator is reportedly based on the novel Zabibah and the King, written by the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and opens on May 11, 2012. Anna Faris, Ben Kingsley and Jason Mantzoukas co-star.
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Though Simon West (Con Air) was recently picked to direct The Expendables 2, the next movie for Sylvester Stallone is the action flick Headshot (working title) which will pair Stallone with director Walter Hill (48 Hours, Warriors). The movie stars Stallone as a New Orleans hitman who teams with a New York City cop to bring down the killers of their respective partners.
Fast Five's Sung Kang was cast in an unspecified role earlier this month, and the latest cast addition is Jason Momoa (Conan the Barbarian, HBO's Game of Thrones), who Latino Review reports will play the villain role of Keegan in the movie.
Headshot, or whatever it will eventually be called, was based on the French graphic novel Du plomb dans la tête (which translates to Bullet to the Head), created by writer Matz and artist Colin Wilson. Production will reportedly begin this month in Louisiana.
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14-year-old Academy Award–nominated actress Hailee Steinfeld missed out on the lead role of the upcoming The Hunger Games, but will instead follow up her True Grit debut with a slightly more well-known literary adaptation in Italian director Carlo Carlei's upcoming retelling of Romeo and Juliet.
Variety reports that playing opposite Steinfeld will be 19-year-old British new comer Douglas Booth (From Time to Time). Booth reportedly beat 300 contenders for the role.
Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) wrote the screenplay for the movie, which starts production in Italy this summer and co-stars Holly Hunter as Juliet's Nurse and Ed Westwick (Gossip Girl) and Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) as Tybalt and Benvolio, respectively.
We're not exactly sure what the plot of the movie is, but we think it has something to do with a young girl falling in love with a vampire, much to the displeasure of the society around them.