– With his scripts for “Tropic Thunder” and next year’s “Iron Man 2”, actor Justin Theroux has started to move behind the scenes, and he’s now going into producing. The “Mullholland Drive” star is developing “Air Guitar,” a comedy set in the world of competitive air guitar shows from writers Mike Lisbe and Nate Reger (“Just Shoot Me”). The film is a remake of the 2006 documentary “Air Guitar Nation.”
– Ray Winstone and Temuera Morrison will star in the UK/New Zealand co-production “Tracker,” a period thriller, to be directed by Ian Sharp. Winstone will play a Boer war veteran on a manhunt for a Maoiri sailor who has apparently killed a British soldier. Shooting starts in New Zealand next week.
– The Fox Animation movie “Rio,” from director Carlos Saldanha (“Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”), about a macaw who travels from Minnesota to the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, now has a cast. Anne Hathaway, Rodrigo Santoro (“300”) and Neil Patrick Harris, who definitely seems to be having a moment right now, have all joined the cast, in unknown roles (we’re guessing that maybe Patrick Harris will play the lead character, described as “nerdy” by The Hollywood Reporter).
– Another actor-turned-director, Peter Paige (“Queer as Folk”) will direct the gay rights drama “Sex Crime Panic,” based on Neil Miller’s book, subtitled “A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s.” The project, compared to “Capote” and “Milk,” looks at the incarceration of a group of gay men in a mental hospital, and will shoot next year.
– British director Dominic Murphy, behind the Sundance hit “White Lightnin’,” is developing a number of follow-ups to that film, including a story about the Bronte sisters, and “Jesus Christ Airways,” a film set in the Biafran war in Nigeria in the 1960s. Interestingly, he’s also planning on adapting Iain M. Banks’ short story “A Gift From The Culture,” the first time Banks’ complex/impenetrable sci-fi universe has been seen on screen.
– Sam Raimi’s Ghost House seem to be insisting on producing a sequel to the fairly mediocre “30 Days of Night.” Ben Ketai, who directed “Blood Trails,” the web series that backed up the release of the original film, will helm “30 Days of Night: Dark Days,” with a C-list cast including Harold Perrineau (“Lost”), Rhys Coiro (“Entourage”), Diora Baird (the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” prequel, half-naked appearances in lad magazines), Kiele Sanchez (“A Perfect Getaway”) and Mia Kirshner (“The Black Dahlia”). We’re pretty sure it’s going direct-to-DVD, but we suppose there’s a slim chance it’ll hit theaters.