— Tahar Rahim, the star of Jacques Audiard’s hotly tipped “A Prophet,” will play the antagonist, a Gaelic prince, in Kevin MacDonald’s Roman epic “The Eagle of the Ninth,” currently filming in Scotland. Ramin joins Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland and Mark Strong in the tale, based on the classic children’s novel by Rosemary Sutcliffe, of a centurion who travels to Scotland to search for the legendary Ninth Legion, who disappeared there 20 years previously. Our correspondent was disappointed by “A Prophet” at Toronto, but had high praise for Rahim, and we’ll be taking another look at the film this weekend.
— Hey, so Mel Gibson’s “What Women Want” was almost a decade ago, and made a ton of money. Do you think it’s time to recycle the idea? You bet it is. Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer, the writers of the forthcoming “Step Up 3-D,” have sold their pitch “What Boys Want,” to New Line, who have attached Disney Channel star Selena Gomez (“The Wizards of Waverly Place”), who will play the central role, a teenage girl who discovers she can hear the thoughts of the boys around her. Presumably, by offering an insight into what teenage boys are thinking about, the movie will feature more blowjobs than any movie since “Deep Throat.”
— Lyndsey Marshal, best known for playing Nicole Kidman’s servant in “The Hours,” and Cleopatra on HBO’s “Rome,” has joined the cast of Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” playing the junkie mother of two twin boys, one of whom is killed in a car accident. The Guardian piece this comes from states that Marshall is one of the leads, which got us all excited — Marshal’s a terrific actress, and was wonderful on stage opposite James McAvoy earlier in the year in “Three Days of Rain.” But we had a quick flick through the script, and the part’s actually fairly small – the London segment focuses on the surviving twin. It does confirm the casting we reported recently, of Cecile De France (“A Secret”), who will play the lead in the Paris segment of the movie, which has just started filming.
— Retired American women’s soccer star Mia Hamm will produce an adaptation of the book “Alive and Kicking: When Soccer Moms Take The Field and Change Their Lives Forever,” which told the story of a group of New Jersey mothers who formed their own soccer team.