Ex-Doctor Who star Matt Smith, who will be seen next year in Terminator: Genisys, is in talks to join Natalie Dormer in Patient Zero. Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky (Deadfall), the film takes place after a global pandemic creates a new species driven by violence. One human survivor immune to the disease and able to communicate with the infected must locate patient zero and find a cure to save his wife and all of humanity. [Deadline]
Bryce Dallas Howard (The Help) may join the Pete's Dragon remake written and directed by David Lowery (Ain't them Bodies Saints). The non-musical live-action/animated hybrid centers on an abused orphan who befriends an invisible dragon. Robert Redford, Oona Lawrence, and Oakes Fegley star, with Howard in talks to play a skeptical forest ranger. [THR]
Bilbo Baggins...er, Martin Freeman, will do The Taliban Shuffle with Tina Fey. Margot Robbie is also aboard the comedy film based on Kim Barker's memoir about her stint "as a fish-out-of-water in Kabul, filing stories about militants, being a woman in wartime Iraq and Pakistan, dealing with boredom interspersed with dashes of violence and the promiscuous war correspondent culture." Freeman would play Fey's love interest, a Scottish photojournalist. John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (Crazy Stupid Love) are directing.
