* Danny Boyle is putting the pieces together for his trippy sounding heist film he's squeezing in before the Olympics. The film is titled Trance, and is about an art heist that goes screwy when the man with all the info suffers amnesia. The rest of gang suspects deceipt, and hires a female hypnotist to get it out of him. Michael Fassbender had been set to star, but dropped out. James McAvoy came in as the leader of the criminals, and now Boyle is looking at Colin Firth to replace Fassbender. Scarlett Johansson, Zoe Saldana and Melanie Thierry(Babylon AD
) are said to be in contention for the female lead. [Twitch]* Ayn Rand herself would appreciate the way the "invisible unseen hand of the marketplace" kicked that pitiful Atlas Shrugged
movie right out of theaters in the blink of an eye. Nobody wanted to sit through it, and so it earned a paltry $4.6M at the box office. Yikes. After bitching about the treatment the film received from critics(admittedly very harsh), producer John Aglialoro seemed pretty adamant there wouldn't be a sequel. Not so fast, though, says producer Harmon Kaslow, who tells 24 Frames that all revenue generated by the upcoming DVD release will go into crafting the follow-up. * Even though the name was changed away from The Hand Job, I still consider The To-Do-List one of the comedies to keep an eye on in 2012. First off, it stars a phenomenal cast led by the only reason to watch Parks & Recreation
, Aubrey Plaza(Funny People
). The plot lends itself to the type of raunchy humore I love: Plaza plays a girl about to hit college but is sexually inexperienced. So she creates a list of all the naughty things she's yet to do. Sounds fantastic, and now I've got two more reasons to get excited, as ThePlaylist confirms that Clark Gregg(Agent Coulson in like every Marvel movie) and the super fine Rachel Bilson(The Last Kiss
) have signed on. Bilson will likely play Plaza's older sister, with Gregg as her conservative daddy.
