the industry

Hayden Panettiere and Nikki Reed Do Easton Ellis

More Than Zero? Hayden Panettiere (Heroes) and Nikki Reed (Twilight, Thirteen) have signed up to star in the the thriller Downers Grove, which is directed by Nelson McCormick (Prom Night) and adapted from a novel — not his own — by Bret Easton Ellis. It “revolves around a cursed high school in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove. At the end of each school year, one senior dies in a bizarre death.” [Variety]

Far From HoustonTimur Bekmambetov (Wanted) has signed with the Weinstein Company to dip his toes into the world of pseudo-verité sci-fi action. The movie is called Apollo 18, and it comes from a screenplay by the winner of the Astana International Action Film Festival, which he founded. Trevor Canwood, who was the technical director for the Matrix sequels, will direct it. The story “unearths lost footage from Apollo 18’s undocumented and covert mission to the moon, revealing disturbing new evidence of other life forms.” [HR]

Million Dollar Babies:: Fox has ordered a game show from the makers of Deal or New Deal called Million Dollar Money Drop. The rules seem to involve a team of two contestants that get a million dollars to spend and bet on seven quiz questions. More exciting: Kevin Pollak — the same Kevin Pollak who starred in A Few Good Men and likes to tell dirty jokes in a Christopher Walken voice — will host. [HR]

Georgia Ghoul: Abigail Spencer (Mad Men), Chad Michael Murray (One Tree Hill), Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica), Emily Alyn Lind , and Cicely Tyson will star in The Haunting in Georgia, a sequel to last year’s sleeper hit The Haunting in Connecticut. Murray will play “Andy Wyrick, the blue collar, no-nonsense husband to Spencer’s Lisa Wyrick, a young mother struggling with horrifying visions, a curse she shares with her wayward sister Joyce (Sackhoff) and now fears has been passed on to her young daughter Heidi (Lind).” [HR]

Best Job Ever: Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, the guys who wrote Zombieland and the upcoming Ryan Reynolds vehicle Deadpool, have signed up to write a movie adaptation of the comic Cowboy Ninja Viking. It’s about what happens when a “multiple personality disorder patient is trained to be an assassin with three different skill sets and the personalities that come with them tries to bring down the nefarious organization that made him.” [Deadline]

Hayden Panettiere and Nikki Reed Do Easton Ellis