the industry

Industry Roundup: Sofia Vergara, Jamie Foxx

Smurfs Family Welcomes Vergara: Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara has been cast in the upcoming animated/live-action The Smurfs. She will play Odile, a “powerful executive at a high-end French cosmetics company” married to Neil Patrick Harris’s character. The film, which also stars Jayma Mays (Glee) and Hank Azaria, will begin filming in New York next week. With each awesome actor that gets added to this cast, our frustration that this movie is about blue cartoon Smurfs mounts. [Heat Vision/HR]

Fox and Foxx: Jamie Foxx is returning to television twenty years after his In Living Color breakout role with a new “urban-flavored sketch-comedy show” for Fox. The network has ordered a pilot for the show, executive-produced by Foxx and Color writers and MadTV creators Fax Bahr and Adam Small. It is unclear whether Foxx will appear on the show, but he should have no trouble bringing in the guest stars considering all of his famous friends. [HR]

Comic Trio Wanted: Producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald (Men in Black, Gladiator) have bought an untitled action-comedy pitch from writers Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly. The film focuses on three actors who are brought in to help bust a DVD-bootlegging operation. However, when it turns out that the operation is much shadier than initially suspected, the trio “ends up on the run from crooks and cops alike with only their ad-lib skills as weapons.” Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and Seth Rogen are no doubt going to be keeping their cell phones close at hand tomorrow. [HR]

Lee at Work
: Evanescence will be releasing a new album this fall, with a first single out this summer and a tour to follow soon thereafter. Lead singer Amy Lee, who began writing for the album a year ago, said she feels like she’s making “the best album of [her] life.” Fans worried the new album will stray from the sound of previous records need not fret: “It wouldn’t be an Evanescence album if it didn’t sound somewhat like Evanescence,” Lee said. Though if that comment is indicative of the lyrics on the forthcoming album, there might be other things to worry about. [Billboard]

Jacob’s Body: Mark Pellegrino (Jacob on Lost) will star in the indie drama Joint Body about a parolee who is abandoned by his ex-wife and restricted from seeing his young daughter. He turns to a “lonely stripper” whom he saves from an assailant before he is forced to run from the law and “face demons from his past.” Of course, in his parallel flash-sideways story line, he is a happy guy in an awesome marriage with a nagging feeling something is off. [Variety]

Woods Is Perfect
: FlashForward’s Christine Woods has been cast as the lead in NBC’s comedy pilot Perfect Couples, which revolves around three sets of couples. This is the first time in a long time “Woods” and “perfect couple” have been in the same sentence of a news story. [HR]

Industry Roundup: Sofia Vergara, Jamie Foxx