Zack Galifianakis is in talks to join the cast of Jay Roach’s “Dinner For Schmucks” starring Steve Carrell, Paul Rudd and Lucy Punch. A remake of the French film “Le Diner de Cons” (literally, “The Dinner Of Idiots”), ‘Schmucks’ will center on a weekly dinner party where regular attendees are challenged to bring the most pathetic guy possible with a winner decided and championed at night’s end. Galifianakis will presumably play one of these subjects, a mattress-store assistant manger dating Carrell’s character’s ex-wife, with shooting for the project set to begin this fall for a July 2010 release. [THR]
Like vultures swooping in on a dead carcass, Drew Barrymore’s “Whip It!” and Ruben Fleischer’s “Zombieland” have both been moved up to the weekend left vacant by the barely-day-old delay of Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island.” The two were scheduled to showdown on October 9th but will now go head to head a week earlier alongside the Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man.” [RiskyBizBlog/BloodyDisgusting]
Here’s another glimpse at Mark Wahlberg and Amy Adams on the set of David O. Russell’s “The Fighter.” Filming is due to wrap up next Wednesday. [Boston.com]
Another staggering three films are reportedly planned for Summit’s “Twilight” franchise, according to some tween actor apparently named Boo Boo Stewart who will debut in “New Moon.” That will take the grand total to five, one more than exists in the current book series. We don’t condone these films in any way but we have to admit, it’ll be amusing watching the irony of geeks and nerds alike complaining about Twilighters for the next 5 years, especially come Comic-Con. [IESB]
A new image of Sam Rockwell in Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man 2” has been released. Rockwell plays fellow industrialist, Justin Hammer. [MTV]
McG’s “Terminator” franchise is facing the prospect of an early goodbye after the company behind the reboot, Halycon, recently declared bankruptcy and are now in the midst of a host of court case battles over financial issues. The company are reportedly just a few “young fly-by-night playboys who arrived in Hollywood in 2006 with some play money from Wall Street hedge funds and private investors” and now find themselves in dire financial straits. After what happened to the economy last year, isn’t there a sense of rough justice that a few Wall Street playboys are copping the hard end of the recession? And don’t worry, that’s not harsh, they’re in the financial industry for god’s sake and probably have millions in off shore bank accounts that they’ll live off of. Long and short: hopefully “Terminator” is dead. McG’s version didn’t do shit to advance the quality of the storyline. Let’s all just forget it even happened. [ThompsonOnHollywood]