Jonah Hill joins Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” opposite Leonardo Dicaprio

May 4, 2012 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting Leave a comment

Gotta hand it to Jonah Hill, who’s making a lot of smart and timely decisions after being nominated for his first Oscar for Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” last year. Now firmly a rising star who’s not stuck in the gross-out comedy box that propelled him to fame, he’s just landed perhaps the highest profile role of his career thus far. Deadline reports Hill has landed a role in Martin Scorsese’s next film and will star opposite Leonardo Dicaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Terence Winter adapted the memoir by Jordan Belfort, which chronicles Belfort’s dramatic rise and fall as the head of notorious Wall Street investment firm Stratton Oakmont: “By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius” that will be played by Dicaprio. Hill will play his close friend who becomes his business partner after Belfort convinces him to quit the slightly less exciting and volatile furniture business.

Hill, known for highly comedic roles in “Superbad”, “Get Him to the Greek” and most recently “21 Jump Street”, landed an unexpected Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor when he played it straight in Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” opposite Brad Pitt. His future slate looks to be a promising mixture of comedy and drama, with ensemble comedy “Neighborhood Watch” alongside Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn awaiting release and the aptly named courtroom drama “True Story” opposite James Franco still to shoot.

Oscar Spotlight: Jonah Hill Gets Serious

February 24, 2012 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in Awards, Features Leave a comment

In this new series “Oscar Spotlight” we take a look at four rising stars who have this year become Oscar nominees for the first time. In a year filled with incredible performances, only one of our chosen actors was a shoo-in. The other three were all (welcome) surprise nominees. Taken from each of the four acting categories, we present …

Jonah Hill Gets Serious

As Melissa McCarthy captures her first Academy Award nomination for a comedic performance, for funny man Jonah Hill it took playing against type to garner his first nomination.

Hill got his big break working with producer/director Judd Apatow in 2005, in a small supporting role in “The 40 Year Old Virgin“. They worked together again in “Knocked Up”, so it was perhaps unsurprising when Apatow upgraded Hill to play the lead opposite Michael Cera in a little movie you may have heard of called “Superbad”. Hill’s ability to mix crass high school humor with a serious coming-of-age friendship won over audiences and critics alike, and Hill began to get his pick of comedic roles, going on to work with Russell Brand in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and the sequel “Get Him to the Greek” and then with Apatow again in 2009′s “Funny People”.

In 2010, Hill worked with John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei in “Cyrus”, a film about a mother and son’s unconventional relationship. Though it garnered mixed critical reception, it was perhaps a bit of foreshadowing that something more serious was in Hill’s repertoire. Even so, Hill flew in the face of all of our expectations by successfully taking on the role of Peter Brand, a genius number cruncher who helps Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) recruit baseball players on a budget for the Oakland A’s in Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball”, a film that had been in development hell for years, going through three rewrites and three different directors. It was worth the wait for the filmmakers though: “Moneyball” garnered a total of six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Emma Stone to drive a cocaine-stashed “Little White Corvette”

January 5, 2012 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 2 Comments

Emma Stone remains one of the busiest and most in demand young actresses around and continues to build a nicely diverse portfolio of roles, with Deadline now reporting she has attached herself to star in “Little White Corvette”, a drug deal comedy written by “30 Minutes or Less” scribe Michael Diliberti.

Stone will play a wild young woman who, along with her nerdy little brother, travel to Miami to try and sell a million dollar stash of cocaine that they find in their late father’s car. Stone has been circling the project since last summer and shooting is expected to begin in late summer, though no director has jumped on board yet.

Stone caught Hollywood’s attention in her 2007 breakout role in “Superbad” and then in 2009′s “Zombieland”, but it was “Easy A” that showed her true movie star potential and landed her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress to boot. This year, she headlined rom-com “Crazy Stupid Love” and Civil Rights era drama “The Help”, an Oscar front-runner in several categories. She recently wrapped up the role of Gwen Stacy in Marc Webb’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” and is currently shooting period mob drama “Gangster Squad”, reuniting with “Crazy” co-star Ryan Gosling. Stone is also attached to romanic comedy “He’s Fuckin’ Perfect” but that appears to still be in the early stages.

Emma Stone declares “He’s Fuckin’ Perfect” in new romantic comedy

November 3, 2011 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 3 Comments

Armed with terrific comedic talent and the critical and commercial success of “Easy A”, it’s no surprise Emma Stone is poised to become the next romcom sweetheart of Hollywood. She will take one more step in that direction as she enters negotiations to star in Fox 2000 romantic comedy “He’s Fuckin’ Perfect”, reports Deadline.

As the title suggests, this isn’t your typical Julia Roberts-Sandra Bullock movie. Stone would play a thoroughly modern, thoroughly cynical media savvy girl who uses the internet to screen all her friends’ potential dates. When her search uncovers a guy she thinks is “fuckin’ perfect”, she uses her skills to mold herself into becoming his perfect match. Written by Adam McKay’s current (but soon to be ex) assistant Lauryn Kahn, the script was never supposed to be shopped around before Stone’s attachment, but it leaked and ended up starting a bidding war between four studios.

Stone caught Hollywood’s attention in her 2007 breakout role in “Superbad” and then in 2009′s “Zombieland”, but it was “Easy A” that showed her true movie star potential and landed her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress to boot. She recently wrapped up the role of Gwen Stacy in Marc Webb’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” and is currently shooting period mob drama “Gangster Squad” opposite Ryan Gosling. She has no other film commitments so “He’s Fuckin’ Perfect” could head into production quickly to accommodate her sure to be brief period of availability.

Jonah Hill may report for “Neighborhood Watch” duty

August 17, 2011 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 2 Comments

Increasingly in demand funnyman Jonah Hill is in talks to star join Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn in alien invasion comedy “Neighborhood Watch”, reports Vulture. Directed by the Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer, the film follows a group of bored suburban dwellers who form a neighborhood watch group and stumble upon an alien invasion plot. Rosemarie DeWitt also recently joined the cast.

Vulture cautions negotiations with Hill may not fall perfectly into place. In Hill’s favor, his good buddies and fellow Appatow alums Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote the screenplay. Against: his rising pricetag, which has grown even higher in light of baseball drama“Moneyball” testing extremely well. “Neighborhood Watch” has a set budget of $90 million, a good chunk of which has already been partitioned off for arguably bigger stars Stiller and Vaughn, and for special effects.

Hill, who broke out in 2007′s “Superbad” alongside Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, recently completed the reboot of “21 Jump Street” opposite Channing Tatum. He’ll take his first foray into awards season opposite Brad Pitt in “Moneyball”, which will have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival next month. Then it’s a return to raunchy comedy in “The Sitter”, opening in December.

UPDATED: Emma Stone NOT in “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”

June 22, 2011 | Posted by Linda Ge in Casting 2 Comments

UPDATED: Bummer! Deadline reports Emma Stone has passed on the offer to star in the film. The hunt for zombie-killing Elizabeth Bennett continues…

Emma Stone must really hate zombies by now. After fleeing and slaying a slew of them in Ruben Fleischer’s “Zombieland”, she’ll have to fight them off once again, and this time she’ll have to do it while wearing a corset. Variety reports the comedic actress has been offered the female lead role of Elizabeth Bennett in “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, which Craig Gillespie is directing for Lionsgate.

Seth Grahame-Smith adapted the screenplay from his own novel of the same name, which faithfully retells the love story between Jane Austen’s famous lovers Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy, but with one major twist: the idyllic Victorian setting of their courtship is overrun with blood-sucking, brain-eating undead zombies. And with both Elizabeth and Darcy well trained in the art of combat, their iconic verbal sparring sometimes descends into inflicting actual physical violence on each other.

The project has been going through musical chairs not only with directors – David O. Russell was originally tapped, followed by Mike White, who also dropped out, paving the way for Gillespie – but also with castings, with Natalie Portman the original Lizzie, followed by talks with Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Mia Wasikowska. Portman still remains part of the project as a producer. On Darcy’s side, the likes of James McAvoy and Bradley Cooper were considered at one point. Perhaps Lionsgate will go with a Darcy as unconventional as Stone’s Elizabeth. Certainly some bit of comedic slant is needed for the tongue-in-cheek adaptation, which actually makes Stone seem like a more fitting casting than some of her predecessors.

She broke out on the scene with a supporting role in 2007′s “Superbad” but it was 2010′s “Easy A” that showed Stone had serious potential as a future A-Lister. She just wrapped up playing Gwen Stacy opposite Andrew Garfield in “The Amazing Spider-Man” for director Marc Webb and will next be seen showing off her dramatic chops in August’s “The Help”, based on the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett.

Jonah Hill to direct “The Kitchen Sink” starring zombies, humans, vampires … and aliens

March 2, 2011 | Posted by Rebecca Lewis in General News 2 Comments

From acting in laugh out loud comedies and indie dramadies, to writing the remake of a hit 80s tv show, Jonah Hill has been wowing audiences (and Sony Productions) since his breakout role in 2008′s Superbad. And now he’s planning to maybe wow them from behind the camera, as Deadline reveal that the first time director is in talks to take the helm of The Kitchen Sink, a black-listed comedy from script writer Oren Uziel, “about the unlikely alliance between a high school-aged vampire, zombie and human as they try to save their town from invading aliens.”

Sounds very The Breakfast Club meets Zombieland to us! The project will be produced by Matt Tolmach who has previously stated his love for the script, telling Deadline “I love high school movies … [the film is] more in the spirit of The Breakfast Club than anything, [in an early scene there are] two kids are running from zombies. Those zombies suddenly are attacked by vampires. Just when they are all facing off, there’s a bright light overhead. You realize the aliens have landed and these groups have to band together, suppress the urge to kill each other, and it becomes thematically the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That makes it different than your usual zombie, vampire, or alien movie. I know from experience how quickly scripts either get bought or not, and it often has no bearing on whether they’re good or not. This one is like the talented kid passed over in the first round of the draft. Thank goodness for the Black List.”

Hill is currently a favourite over at Sony Pictures where he is co-writing 21 Jump Street (as well as co-starring alongside Channing Tatum), as well as co-starring with Brad Pitt in Moneyball, another Sony production.

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