* The multi-talented Lake Bell (In a World...) is moving back in front of the camera for The Coup, joining Owen Wilson and Pierce Brosnan in the thriller directed by John Erick Dowdle. Co-written by Dowdle and his brother Drew, the film centers on an American family living in Southeast Asia who must flee a dangerous rebel leader when a violent coup erupts. Bell will play "Annie Dwyer, a woman who is loved by everyone and has a seemingly perfect family life, but wonders sometimes if she should be happier than she is." [THR]
* Fast-rising star Brenton Thwaites, who has the Disney adaptation Maleficent and the lead role in The Giver coming up, has added another major project. He'll join Alex Proyas' Gods of Egypt, which stars Gerard Butler, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Geoffrey Rush. Thwaites will play a human thief who teams up with the god Osiris to get revenge on Set, who murdered his own brother and cursed the land. [Deadline]
* Salma Hayek has won the lead role in How to Make Love Like an Englishman, a sexually-charged romantic comedy that stars the suddenly ubiquitous Pierce Brosnan and Jessica Alba. Directed by Tom Vaughn, the story has Brosnan as a hedonistic Cambridge University professor who falls for the perfect woman played by Hayek. Unfortunately it happens after he's already impregnated her grad student stepsister, played by Alba. [Deadline]
