* The true story of convicted serial killer Brian Nichols is being brought to the big screen, and it's got some great young talent attached to the leading roles. David Oyelowo and Kate Mara are set to star in Captive, an adapation of the best-selling book An Unlikely Angel by author Ashley Smith, who happened to be one of Nichols' hostages. Oyelowo will play Nichols who"broke out of a courthouse jail and shot dead the judge assigned to his case as well as a court reporter, sheriff’s deputy and FBI officer. While eluding a statewide manhunt, Nichols took Ashley Smith (Mara), a single mother struggling with meth addiction, hostage in her own apartment. Over the course of her ordeal, Smith used a book she had been given, Rick Warren's 'The Purpose Driven Life,' to reason with her captor, with surprising results." Directed by Jerry Jameson, filming is set to begin later this month.
* Patrick Wilson will leave the ominous world of James Wan's Insidious movies and into heartwarming family drama set in the Virginia mining country. He'll join Ashley Judd and Whoopi Goldberg (she still acts??) in Big Stone Gap, based on the series of novels by Adriana Trigiani, who is making her directorial debut. The film centers on a middle-aged woman who finds love amidst an eccentric Virginia coal town. Sounds positively lovely, and like something that should fit in nicely as part of the Hallmark Channel Hall of Fame.
