Sure Shots: 'The Hobbit'; Mary Elizabeth Winstead; Elizabeth Olsen

* Even though Peter Jackson has been filming The Hobbit for nearly a year, casting on the second chapter has already begun. Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, who I still remember from the final season of Head of the Class, will play the dwarf Dain Ironfoot in the film. Dain is only a marginal member of the story, appearing at the final battle at the request of his cousin, Thorin Oakenshield(Richard Armitage). The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will open on December 14th, but we'll likely see Connolly in The Hobbit: There and Back Again which opens a year later. [Deadline]

* Daniel Stamm may have missed out on directing a sequel to his surprise horror hit, The Last Exorcism, but he's already busy casting his follow-up. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who is riding high on the critical buzz from her festival hit, Smashed, will star in The Darkness, a psychological horror based on a novel by Henry James. The story centers on an American student working in an English manor for a charismatic tudor, who comes to think that the children are being haunted. Oh this sounds lazy and dreadful, but Winstead is always worth the price of admission. [Screen Daily]

* Elizabeth Olsen will join Glenn Close and Tom Felton(Harry Potter) are all in talks to star in an adaptation of Emile Zola's 1867 classic novel, Therese Raquin. The story, which was turned into a famous stageplay in 1873, tells the story of an unhappy wife who murders her husband with the assistance of her lover. When the two are then married, they continue to be haunted by the victim's spirit. Charlie Stratton, an acclaimed theater director who has led stage versions of the novel before, will be behind the camera. Olsen was recently screwed out of a Best Actress nomination for her role in Martha Marcy May Marlene, while Close received one for Albert Nobbs. [Deadline]