Salma Hayek is in negotiations to play Adam Sandler’s wife on the big screen. In addition to Sandler.
The untitled Columbia Pictures ensemble comedy stars Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider and David Spade in a story of five best friends from high school who reunite over a holiday weekend.
Maya Rudolph, who will play Rock’s wife and Colin Quinn are also joining the project. Dennis Dugan is directing the film, from a script by Sandler and Fred Wolf.
Hayek recently has been seen in a recurring role as Alec Baldwin’s love interest on 30 Rock and also serves as executive producer of Ugly Betty. Her next big-screen appearance will be in Paul Weitz’s Cirque du Freak.
Four more land roles in Shyamalan’s Airbender Aasif Mandvi, Shaun Toub, Cliff Curtis and Keong Sim have joined the cast of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender.
They join Noah Ringer who plays the title role Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone and Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel in the Paramount Pictures/Nickelodeon Movies project, which is based on the popular anime-inspired Nickelodeon TV series. The live-action feature is scheduled for release on July 2, 2010.
In the film, the four nations – Air, Water, Earth and Fire – are in turmoil as the Fire Nation wages war on the others. Aang (Ringer) is the lone Avatar who can manipulate all four elements and possibly restore peace to their world.
Mandvi (The Daily Show With Jon Stewart) will play the Fire Nation’s Commander Zhao, Curtis (A Thousand Words) will play the Fire Lord Ozai, and Toub (Iron Man) is cast as Uncle Iroh, a retired Fire Nation general. Sim will play Earthbending Father. Shyamalan has signed to shoot the first feature in a planned trilogy, to which Paramount has budgeted $250 million. The martial-arts-heavy series is set to film in Greenland and Vietnam.
Clint Eastwood casts familiar name in South African drama Scott Eastwood has nabbed a role in the untitled Nelson Mandela drama being directed by his father, Clint. The younger Eastwood joins Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon in the Warner Bros./Spyglass Entertainment film.
The true story centers on how Mandela, as the new South African president, worked with the captain of the national rugby team, Francois Pienaar, to help unite the country after the official end of apartheid. Eastwood will play a member of Pienaar’s team, which makes a run at the 1995 World Cup Championship.
South African writer Anthony Peckham adapted the screenplay from John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. Scott Eastwood, who professionally has often used the name Scott Reeves, had roles in his father’s films Gran Torino and Flags of Our Fathers. He also appeared in An American Crime and Pride.
DeGeneres to play Mother Nature in comedy Ellen DeGeneres has signed on to play Mother Nature in an untitled comedy film being written by Sex and the City writer-executive producer Jenny Bicks. In the Walden Media production, the Emmy-winning talk show host will return to Earth for the first time since the planet’s creation. No word yet on whether Mother Nature likes to dance. “I’ve always wanted to control the weather,” DeGeneres said.
Family-friendly Walden Media produced the Chronicles of Narnia series, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Charlotte’s Web. Its forthcoming slate includes Tooth Fairy with Dwayne Johnson and Ramona & Beezus adapted from the Beverly Cleary books. DeGeneres hasn’t taken a live-action film role since 1999 when she appeared in EDtv and The Love Letter.
She was the voice of Dory in Finding Nemo and is producing and lending her voice to “Dog Show,” an animation project in development at Warner Bros. Bicks has been a writer-producer on Men in Trees, Seinfeld, Naked Truth and Dawson’s Creek. She co-wrote the feature What a Girl Wants.