* Jessica Alba and Thomas Jane will star in The Veil, a supernatural thriller with some interesting talent behind the camera. Robert Ben Garant (Night at the Museum) wrote the screenplay with Phil Joanou (Gridiron Gang) directing the story which begins "30 years ago, when members of a religious cult known as Heaven's Veil take their own lives. The truth behind what really happened remains buried deep in the memory of the sole survivor, a five-year-old girl, who returns to the compound with a documentary crew as an adult. They soon discover something that is far more terrifying than anything they could have imagined." Alba's been keeping plenty busy and has the teen assassin film Barely Lethal coming up, plus rom-com How to Make Love Like an Englishman, and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Jane gets it on with Shailene Woodley in White Bird in a Blizzard, and co-stars with John Cusack in Drive Hard. [THR]
* Here's one to keep an eye on as a potential Oscars favorite. Helen Mirren is in early talks to star in The Golden Lady, an art world drama directed by My Week with Marilyn's Simon Curtis. Mirren would play real life figure Maria Altmann, a Jewish refugee who mounted a successful legal campaign to reclaim priceless pieces of art stolen from her family by the Nazis. Among these were a collection by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, which included the Portrait Of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, sold just a few years ago for $135M. [DailyMail]
* With Jack Black already confirmed to play author R.L. Stine in an adaptation of his Goosebumps series, his two young co-stars have now been found. Dylan Minnette, most recently seen in Prisoners, and Odeya Rush (The Odd Life of Timothy Green) have come aboard the film to be directed by Rob Letterman. Minnette will play "Zach Cooper, who moves with his family move from NY to to the idyllic town of Greendale, MD, where his secretive new neighbor turns out to be author R.L. Stine (Black). When the many, many demons in Stine’s mind are set free by Slappy, a demonic ventriloquist’s dummy, it’s up to Zach and Stine’s niece Hannah (Odeya Rush) to put the evil genies back in the bottle." [Deadline]
