EXCLUSIVE: Oscar winner Christine Lahti is joining James Brolin and Jason Ritter in The Steps, an indie drama from director-producer Andrew Currie (Fido). The pic follows down-on-his-luck Jeff (Ritter), who accepts his father’s invitation to spend the weekend at his lake house to meet his new wife (Lahti) and family. Robyn Harding scripted. Mary Waterhouse is also producing with Currie. Lahti recently shot indie Safelight with Juno Temple and Evan Peters and Mania Days with Katie Holmes. She recurs on Netflix’s Grace And Frankie opposite Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
Cory Hardrict, Jesse Metcalfe, Margot Bingham (Boardwalk Empire), Zulay Henao (Fighting), Rob Riley, Jason Dohring, Mo McRae, Hill Harper (CSI NY), and Lala Anthony (Think Like A Man Too) have joined the cast of Destined for director Qasim “Q” Basir and his Confluential Films. The Perfect Guy producer Tommy Oliver is producing with Whitewater Films’ Rick Rosenthal and Tilted Windmill Productions’ Matt Ratner. Tom Rau, Walter Thurmond, Bert Kern, Harper, Hardrict, Nick Morton and Arun Kumar are exec producers. The film tracks the split destinies of young Rasheed Smith, who is tempted into the drug game and follows two divergent life paths: In one, he goes to prison and emerges the head of a criminal empire; in the other, he graduates from college only to wrestle with decisions as a climber at an architectural firm. Filming is underway in Detroit.
Jude Law is in negotiations to join Guy Ritchie’s Knights Of The Roundtable for Warner Bros and Village Roadshow. The King Arthur pic stars Sons Of Anarchy‘s Charlie Hunnam as Arthur and French actress Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey (Pirates Of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) as Guinevere. The script is by Joby Harold, who is producing with Ritchie, Lionel Wigram, Akiva Goldsman and Tory Tunnell. Warners already set the release for July 22, 2016.
Unbroken‘s Jack O’Connell and Julia Roberts are circling roles in Money Monster, the financial thriller from TriStar that Jodie Foster is directing. George Clooney is set to star as a TV personality who is taken hostage by a desperate blue-collar gunman live, on the air. Jamie Linden, Alan DiFore and Jim Kouf are credited writers on the pic, which lenses next year. O’Connell’s on the cusp of breaking through in December’s Oscar contender Unbroken, the prestige biopic that sees him playing Olympian and WWII vet Louis Zamperini for director Angelina Jolie.
Jen Yamato
