Playing characters with wildly flamboyant and colorful names is nothing to Samuel L. Jackson. Nick Fury, "Stacks" Edwards (in Goodfellas), Zeus Carver (Die Hard with a Vengeance), Shaft, Romulus Ledbetter (The Caveman's Valentine), Mace Windu, The Octupus (The Spirit), and that's just the start. Now you can add The Black Phantom to his list of strange monickers as Jackson has replaced Jamie Foxx in the action-comedy. He'll star alongside Kevin Hart with Tim Story directing the film about the partnership between a betrayed mob enforcer played by Hart, and Jackson's Black Phantom, the notorious hit man hired to kill him. [Deadline]
Hot on the heels of Jennifer Connelly coming aboard Philip Noyce's adaptation of American Pastoral comes word that Dakota Fanning is now joining the cast. Ewan McGregor stars in the film based on Philip Roth's book, with Fanning taking on the key role of Merry Levov, the daughter to happily middle-class Jewish businessman Swede Levov, whose life is upended by the political climate of the 1960s.
Casey Affleck is in talks to join Chris Pine in Disney's rescue drama, The Finest Hours. Directed by Craig Gillespie (Million Dollar Arm), the true story is based on the 1952 collision of two oil tankers near Cape Cod and the daring Coast Guard rescue that followed. Affleck will be seen next in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, and is planning to direct a biopic on Major League Baseball slugger Josh Hamilton. [Deadline]
