Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) has joined Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart in the spy comedy, Central Intelligence. Penned by Ike Barinholtz (Neighbors) and David Stassen with Rawson Marshall Thurber (We're the Millers) directing, the film has Hart as an account with Johnson as his former high school classmate who used to be bullied but is now...well, the friggin' Rock. He now works for the CIA and ropes Hart's character into a mission to thwart the sale of military secrets. Ryan will take the female lead as a CIA operative chasing Johnson's character. [Deadline]
She was pretty terrible in The Other Woman but apparently that won't stop Nicki Minaj from lining up another comedic role. She's joined Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, Common, Eve, and Regina Hall in Barbershop 3, a return of the popular comedies set in a Chicago barbershop. Minaj will play Draya, a hairdresser working in the shop's beauty parlor. Malcolm D. Lee is directing, following up on his hit film, The Best Man Holiday. [Variety]
Juliette Binoche, who can see now in Clouds of Sils Maria, has lined up the lead role in Pearl, a biopic on missionary and novelist Pearl S. Buck. The daughter of missionary parents, Pearl spent much of her early life in China, and won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1931 book The Good Earth, which depicted the hardships of peasant life in China. She also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Roxanne Messina Captor wrote the screenplay and will direct.
