* With Aubrey Plaza(Funny People
) in the lead of The Hand Job, it was already one of the few comedies I'm truly looking forward to over the next year. As if it couldn't get any better, Christopher Mintz-Plasse(Superbad
) has signed on as the nerdy best friend of a character played by Johnny Simmons(The Conspirator). Scott Porter(Bandslam
) is also aboard as a guy Plaza has a crush on. So far that makes Alia Shawkat, Bill Hader, Mae Whitman, Connie Britton, Andy Samberg, and Derrick Comedy make up the rest of the known cast with a few spots left to be filled. The film features Plaza as a high school grad who decides she needs more sexual experience before she reaches college. Thanks to Variety for this story. * With Jose Padilha set to take up MGM's reboot of Robocop
, somebody's got to put some words into the vigilante cyborg's mouth. That job goes to Josh Zetumer, who Deadline confirms will be working closely with Padilha on the script. Zetumer's been a busy guy with a number of projects upcoming or in the planning phase(Dune, The Infiltrator), and was one of the guys brought in to write a fourth Bourne film before the job ultimately went back to Tony Gilroy. * Turns out Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor won't be involved with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter afterall. The Academy Award winning musician had been rumored to be scoring Timur Bekmambetov's adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's revisionist horror novel, and possibly even making a cameo appearance as a vampire. Now Reznor confirms that any stories about his participation were premature, and he wont be scoring or starring. Bummer.
