G Unit: Angelina Jolie is close to joining the cast of Ridley Scott’s Gucci, a drama about intrigue in high fashion. Scott wants Jolie to play Patrizia Reggiano, the woman sentenced to 29 years in prison for plotting the murder of her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci. It’s not yet written, but the script will focus on the family in the seventies and eighties when it was pulling in half a billion dollars annually. After an inter-family power struggle that ends with Maurizio coming out on top, things go downhill until he’s eventually murdered. Scott is still looking for his Maurizio and has approached Leonardo DiCaprio, who remains unattached. If Scott seems to be in a hurry, it’s for fear a Chinese film company will rip off the idea and produce a version that looks a lot like his, only to have it fall apart as soon as its seams are strained. Cheap counterfeits! [Variety]
No Trains Here: Vanessa Redgrave, David Strathairn, and Monica Bellucci have joined Rachel Weisz in The Whistleblower. Based on a true story, the film follows a lady cop (Weisz) who risks her job and her life to uncover a scandal in postwar Bosnia. The screenplay was based on the story of Kathryn Bolkovac, who ran an office that investigated sex crimes and found peacekeepers, police, and U.N. workers committing the very crimes she was investigating. Sounds utterly depressing and much worse than what we thought it was going to be about after seeing the title: train conductors. [Variety]
Big Shop of Horrors: Writer and actor Paul Rust is developing a sitcom for NBC based on his stint as a Wal-Mart employee. Rust, who’s writing and starring as himself, graduated from the University of Iowa and returned to his small hometown only to land a gig at Wal-Mart working alongside his high-school principal. Of course, the store in the show won’t be called Wal-Mart, but as long as it captures that sanitized-but-still-filthy feeling of the world’s largest big-box retailer, no one will be able to tell the difference. [Variety]
Park Ranger Dundee: ABC has brought Judy Greer on board to star in a sitcom based on the book I’m With Stupid. She’ll star as a Manhattanite who has a fling with a park ranger in South Africa. After she returns to the city, he tracks her down. The novel’s author, Elaine Szewczyk, will write and executive produce. Greer has previously starred on ABC’s Miss Guided, the title of which proved rather appropriate when it was canceled after seven episodes. [Variety]
Alphabet Soup: ABC’s Castle has landed a full second season, with the network ordering the series’ back nine episodes. The show, about a novelist who helps a detective solve crimes, has attracted an average of 10.1 million viewers between the ages of 18–49 each night, good for second place in the Monday 10 p.m. time slot. Meanwhile, Eastwick is still awaiting a back nine order and a grassroots movement to save the show is already underway. Fans are preparing to mail tons of toad eyes to ABC HQ by the end of the week. [Variety]
