* Cobie Smulders(How I Met Your Mother
) has now entered final negotiations to join Joss Whedon's The Avengers. As reported just a couple of days ago, she was the frontrunner ahead of Morena Baccarin(Serenity
) for the role of Nick Fury "sidekick" Maria Hill, but now it's looking like a done deal according to THR. The Avengers begins shooting in April with a planned May 4th 2012 release date. * Back in November we learned that Al Pacino would be starring in Arbitage, from director Nicholas Jarecki(The Informers, Tyson
), about a troubled hedge fund magnate desperately trying to sell his firm before his fraud is exposed. Well, somewhere along the way Pacino dropped out, and now Richard Gere has taken his place. He'll be joining Susan Sarandon and Eva Green, and I'm going to pray it's better than The Informers
, which Jarecki scripted...if you can call what that was a script. * Mike Newell's stellar career hit a road bump with last year's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
, but if he's looking to make up for it then he could do worse than following the works of Charles Dickens. He's looking to adapt his classic story, Great Expectations
, as part of a year-long celebration of the anniversary of the author's birth. It's been adapted more than a dozen times already, with most considering the 1946 film the standard bearer, but me I've always been keen to the 1998 version, starring Gwyneth Paltrow(in that dress! Oi!!) and directed by Alfonso Cuaron.
