* Still riding high on the acclaim she received for playing George Clooney's rebellious daughter in The Descendants, Shailene Woodley has been awfully choosey about what she'll do next. While she's still juggling a number of potential opportunties, she's jumping at the chance to star in The Spectacular Now, based on the novel by Tim Tharp and directed by James Ponsoldt(Smashed). The story follows Sutter Keely, an alcoholic, hard partying high school senior who passes out and wakes up on Aimee's(Woodley) front lawn, and decides to date her merely as a social reclamation project. Instead, it's Aimee who teaches him a lesson about his current way of life not being all it's cracked up to be. The script comes from Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber(500 Days of Summer), with Shawn Levy on board to produce. [Variety]
* Here's what I like about Nicolas Winding Refn. All of his movies seem to fit perfectly into his wheelhouse. Strong, muscular movies that run counter to the typical Hollywood crap, with a distinctly European twist. While we wait for him to wrap up filming on Only God Forgives with his best bud, Ryan Gosling, Refn has been jumping into the producer arena. Not only is he producing a remake of his own original film, Pusher, but now he'll back a prequel to 1998 cult horror, Maniac Cop. William Lustig and Larry Cohen, who directed and wrote the original film about a serial killer dressed in a cop uniform, will return as producers but no director is in place yet. Could Refn take the job himself? Probably not, as he's already got a lot on his plate. After Only God Forgives wraps, he'll take on I Walk with the Dead starring Carey Mulligan, and the eventual remake of Logan's Run. [DailyGrindhouse]
* Gerard Butler has been all over the place lately, with one long gestating project finally landing a director, and Butler joining another another one. First, Tommy Wirkola(Dead Snow) will direct Afterburn, based on the graphic novel by Scott Chitwood and Paul Ens' about a future earth where the Eastern Hemisphere has been destroyed by a massive solar flare. In the aftermath, a team of recovery experts will venture into this dangerous hot zone and recover valuable artifacts. Antoine Fuqua had been lined up to direct at one point.
Next up, Butler has entered talks to star in the boringly titled Manhunt, an action film from Breck Eisner(Sahara) about a team of FBI agents who team with a renowned bear hunter to track down a domestic terrorist escaped into the North Carolina wilderness. Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby(Iron Man, Children of Men) wrote the script.
