* With Radha Mitchell just having come aboard Antoine Fuqua's White House thriller, Olympus Has Fallen, the latest to try and save the day is Cole Hauser. Usually a bad guy, Hauser will actually play a Secret Service agent in the film, which has Gerard Butler as the hard luck ex-agent who comes to the rescue when the White House is taken over by North Korean terrorists. Aaron Eckhart and Angela Bassett are co-starring. Hauser just recently wrapped up playing the villain in A Good Day to Die Hard. Don't be surprised if Hauser's character turns out to be a traitor or something. [THR]
* After years of various filmmakers trying to put together a biopic on the life of singer/songwriter Janis Joplin, it looks like one is finally going to happen, and the talent is pretty impressive. Sean Durkin(Martha Marcy May Marlene) is set to direct Joplin, with rising star Nina Arianda taking on the difficult task of emulating Joplin's presence. Arianda recently appeared in Tower Heist and played Michael Sheen's wife in Midnight in Paris. She's also a Tony Award winning stage actress and nearly landed a role in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty. Producer Peter Newman has the rights to Joplin's songs with her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, as well as the biographies chronicling her life. The film will follow the last six months of her life, before she tragically died of a drug overdose in 1970. Arianda will do all the singing herself, and the small budget film will be done for roughly $20M. Filming is set to begin early next year. [Deadline]
