Go JoGo: Joseph Gordon-Levitt has joined the high-profile Christopher Nolan–Leonardo DiCaprio project Inception, taking on the role James Franco had to give up (because he was too busy studying). The plot is still super-duper-secret, but character details have been revealed: Gordon-Levitt plays DiCaprio’s CEO-type buddy, Marion Cotillard plays his wife, and Ellen Page plays his grad-student sidekick. Ohhh … okay, yeah, we totally know what this is about now, but we don’t want to, like, spoil it or anything. [HR]
Trucks and Trains: Denzel Washington and Tony Scott are in talks to team up for the fifth time, on Unstoppable, a runaway-train action flick. Washington will play a grizzled-vet engineer who jumps in a train with a rookie conductor to chase said runaway train, one that is inconveniently carrying a whole mess-load of toxic chemicals. Seriously, how the fuck is one train supposed to run down another train? This doesn’t even sound like a bad SNL skit — it sounds like a bad MADtv skit. [HR]
Planning Ahead: Michaela Watkins has signed on for J. Lo romantic comedy The Back-Up Plan, in which she’ll play Mona, the — and this you will not believe — longtime best friend of Miss Lopez. See, this is how it works — you grind for years in the comedy trenches, land your dream job on SNL, and only then reap the real reward: bit parts in crap Hollywood movies! [HR]
Planning Ahead: Michaela Watkins has signed on for J. Lo romantic comedy The Back-Up Plan, in which she’ll play Mona, the — and this you will not believe — longtime best friend of Miss Lopez. See, this is how it works — you grind for years in the comedy trenches, land your dream job on SNL, and only then reap the real reward: bit parts in crap Hollywood movies! [HR]
Blades and Dreads: Robert Rodriguez has two awesome-sounding projects in the pipeline. The first is Machete, an independently financed feature adaptation of a fake, violent, and delightfully preposterous Grindhouse trailer starring Danny Trejo as a badass. The second is Predators, a sequel to Brideshead Revisited. No, it’s a sequel to Predator. [Variety]
Almodóvar on the Small Screen: Pedro Almodóvar will executive produce a television adaptation of his 1988 hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown for FoxTV. The original revolved around a two-day period in the life of a freshly dumped voice actress comically trying to track down her ex-man; the series will revolve around a group of women, living in the suburbs, who are all longtime friends. And there’s no better time for a big shout-out to Ms. Harrington, who made us watch Women in sophomore-year Spanish. [HR]
