Jessica Biel is set to join Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, and possibly James D’Arcy in Sacha Gervasi‘s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. According to Deadline, Biel is set to play Vera Miles who played Lila Crane, the sister of unfortunate Bates Motel guest, Marion Crane. Johansson is set to play Janet Leigh (who played Marion), Hopkins will play Hitchock, and Mirren will play Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville, and if D’Arcy signs on, he’ll play Anthony Perkins (who played Norman Bates).
Hit the jump for more.
Making of Psycho is one of two Hitchcock-based productions in the works. Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane) is directing The Girl, which focuses on the making of The Birds, and stars Toby Jones as Hitchcock and Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedrin. Keep these Hitchcock flicks on your Oscar radar since the Academy loves famous people playing famous people, and they’ll probably like movies that focus on the legendary filmmaker even though Hitchcock only won a lifetime achievement award despite being nominated for Best Director five times during his career (he had the best and shortest acceptance speech of all time: “Thank you, very much indeed”).
Biel will next be seen in Len Wiseman‘s remake of Total Recall starring Colin Farrell, and in December she’ll be co-starring with Gerard Butler in the little league soccer comedy Playing the Field.
Collider: Have you been able to see a cut yet of The Avengers?
When asked about the inspiration for the show, co-creator Lilien said that he’d wanted to combine mystery and mythology into a show for some time and that the idea of Alcatraz literally came to him in a dream. He liked the twist that the prison closed due to a conspiracy and every one of the inmates disappeared. He took the idea to Wynbrandt and they developed it from there.When asked, “Why Alcatraz?” Wynbrandt responded, “The word itself evokes [something] Gothic and mysterious. Robert Kennedy signed the papers to shut it down. If there’s a Kennedy involved, it has to be a conspiracy.”Garcia quipped that on shows where the secretive plot lines can get a bit confusing (alluding to his time spent on Lost), he said, “Going with the flow is what you learn for these shows.”Johnson commented on the fact that the writing team figures out the world of Alcatraz a little more with each passing inmate and episode.On how Jones got the lead role, she said, “I just kinda fell into it…even though I’m not the Evangeline Lily type.”Since Nagra’s character, Dr. Lucy Banerjee, is currently in the show in the 1960s, she occurs in a lot of flashbacks. Nagra said she thoroughly enjoyed working with the actors who played the inmates. In a potential [SPOILER], Johnson said that they certainly wouldn’t “waste her only in the past.”
Johnson spoke briefly about the finale, saying that audiences would meet a character they haven’t seen yet and he (or she) would be working with Warden James (Coyne). The finale will reveal the character behind the Warden’s story. Johnson also said that there was a certain “wink” from the Warden in this week’s episode that clued the audience into a very important scene or person.When asked if his girlfriend Nikki (Jeananne Goossen) on Alcatraz would meet a similar fate to his girlfriend Libby (Cynthia Watros) on Lost, Garcia replied that he’d been “cock-blocked by Kevin Bacon,” owing to the fact that Goossen has a role in an upcoming TV movie starring Bacon.According to Wynbrandt and Johnson, the 63s (the escaped inmates) heal faster and age slower than normal people due to colloidal silver in their blood. Answers surrounding this mysterious source of the blood will be found in next week’s finale.Lilien remarked, “Our criminals are too good-looking on Alcatraz.”Pyne commented that, “There are more of them [inmates] back than we know about.”Coyne talked about the continuing power play between the Warden and Deputy Warden E. B. Tiller (Jason Butler Harner). He says that the tension between them will continue to build.
Wynbrandt commented that, “It’s not just what happened to the 63s, it’s what happened to everyone involved,” and the show will eventually reveal how they came together.Johnson stated that the Warden likes to create competition among his staff and stressed that the events of the past will have an influence on the present.[SPOILER] There is an antagonistic scene in the finale between Tommy Madsen and his brother, Ray Archer (Forster), but it is further explored with a touching scene between the two men at an infirmary in 1960, which is also shown in the finale.Jones’ character will drive her Ford Mustang Fastback for the car chase, just like Steve McQueen did in Bullitt. Lilien said that “downstairs” will be opened at the end of the season and they will show people what’s behind the door.Johnson and Pyne teased that there is a big cliffhanger at the end of the finale, because they aren’t sure about the progression into a second season yet. The finale will satisfy a lot of questions for fans, however.
Favorite inmates of the cast and crew are as follows: For Jones, it was Sonny Burnett (Theo Rossi); for Nagra and Coyne, it was Ernest Cobb (Joe Egender); Garcia’s favorite was Jeff Pierce’s Jack Sylvane; Lilien’s was actually the first guard, Guy Hastings (Jim Parrack) but he did say that Lucy (Nagra) was their favorite 63; Wynbrandt preferred the Ames Brothers (Graham Shiels and Travis Aaron Wade), but he also mentioned that Kit Nelson (Michael Eklund) frightened all of them; and Forster’s favorite is, of course, his brother Tommy Madsen (Hoflin).As for what fans can expect if there is to be a second season, questions are asked as to what happened to Rebecca’s parents, Doc’s (Garcia) backstory is touched on and if Neill has anything to do with it there will be “more death. He wants less lines and more shooting.”
Additionally, producers are recasting yet another role for the sequel to Percy Jackson & The Olmpians: The Lightening Thief. We recently learned that Nathan Fillion will be taking over the role of Hermes in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters, and now Heat Vision reports that Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has been tapped to play Chrion in follow-up. The centaur part was filled by Pierce Brosnan in the first film, but for unspecified reasons Head will be stepping in this time around. Thor Freudenthal is directing the pic, which sees the return of Logan Lerman as the titular Percy. He embarks with his other demigod friends to the Island of the Cyclops (the Bermuda Triangle) in order to retrieve a Golden Fleece.
Maggie Grace Time Index
Given the revolving door of screenwriters on the project, it’s no surprise that creative differences have lead to this prolonged development process. Vulture hears that Pine wanted to make the film a character-driven espionage movie, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura wanted an action pic, and Paramount executives were in favor of turning the untitled reboot into a thriller. The issue has been finding a screenwriter who can combine those three genres into one cohesive movie, and apparently David Koepp (Spider-Man) recently turned in a draft that attempts to appease everyone’s demands.
Collider: Are you getting a sense of the excitement for the film, now that little pieces have gotten out?
How do you honor that iconography, but also make it your own movie?
Stone: Well, there were fun elements, like swinging, that I’d never done, or reacting to something that’s not there, which was interesting. But, the greatest take-away was realizing that everything is so grounded in reality. It doesn’t matter how big the world is around you, or the blue screens in the background. You are doing a scene between two people, and it’s human and it’s real. That’s a comforting thing, when you’re in something that’s so seemingly daunting and it’s such a big environment. It’s nice, at the end of the day, to know that you’re just acting as you would be, in any circumstance. 
Stone: Yeah, there’s her duty to her father and her duty to her boyfriend because she’s a real confidante for him. Their intimacy is such an incredible element. Gwen has been in control her whole life. She’s the oldest daughter of a police chief, who is constantly terrified that her father is going to die, every day. She has to have an element of being smart because she has to be. She’s a valedictorian because she has to be. She has to take care of things and be responsible for her family. She has to try to let go and trust somebody else who puts themselves in the face of death, every day. It’s like, “Great, now she’s drawn to another person that could die, at any moment, and she has to keep his secret, and pick and choose between her first love, which is her father, like every girl.” That’s the first man in your life, and then there’s your first boyfriend. So, it’s a pretty complex situation for Gwen. There’s a lot of sadness and fear in her life, combined with the fact that she’s outwardly confident and strong and smart, and takes no bullshit. She’s soft and 17, underneath it all. 
With the romance being so important in the story, how quickly did you see the chemistry happening between Emma and Andrew [Garfield]? Did that happen right away?
Webb: Well, we’re telling the story in a different way. I think it’s really important, when you’re redefining a character, for the audience to experience things that they haven’t experienced, from the ground up. I wanted to build a character. I feel like point of view is a really crucial thing in the story, and that you need to build up the emotional building blocks, so that you can experience all the other emotions in a very specific way, rather than just experiencing it in an intellectual way. That’s why, at the beginning of the movie, there’s the story of his parents being pulled from him. You want to feel what that sense of abandonment, as an audience member, so that you can readily and appropriately identify. We’re creating a different universe with different rules and a different tone and different villains. We were very careful to honor the iconography of Spider-Man, but we wanted to tell it in a new and different way. 
Stone: The Sam Raimi trilogy. I didn’t read comics, growing up. I watched a lot of movies, and those were my comic books. So, it was the trilogy. And then, my exposure really increased by becoming affiliated with Spider-Man. When I found out that I was going to audition for Gwen, I looked into the Gwen Stacy story. I was so excited that it was Gwen because, when your exposure has been the Sam Raimi trilogy, you only really knew about Mary Jane, other than Bryce Dallas Howard’s portrayal in the third movie, but that’s a totally different version of Gwen. So, it was like I had some backstory, all of a sudden, to the Peter and Mary Jane relationship. He’s gone through something so horribly traumatic in his life and has such a sense of guilt that it really added so much to the story. So, I was so excited to get to be a part of bringing that story to life. 
Webb: We looked at a lot of people, and then we started casting and there was something about him. I remember that there was a very specific moment, when we were screen testing with Andrew. He was eating a cheeseburger that wasn’t really in the movie. It was just for the screen test. And he moved in a way that felt adolescent. He was eating a cheeseburger and he flopped his elbows around, and I didn’t know what I was drawn to, initially. I just watched it over and over again. I couldn’t stop watching it. I thought that it was so interesting, and there were so many layers in the performance, and I was drawn to it. I just wanted to watch it, over and over again. Beyond that, he’s emphatic about finding authenticity and emotional reality in a scene, and he will not reach for jokes. He will not reach for any kind of emotion that does not feel real or authentic. That’s an enormous gift. It’s a very difficult thing for actors because they’re often asked to do things that are really crazy. When you have to react to a lizard that’s a tennis ball, it’s a really, really difficult, tricky piece of craft. He could do that in a way that felt real, and I felt that was really exceptional. Beyond that, he can do emotional depth and heartbreaking scenes. There’s a lot of tragedy in the movie. He can do romance and he can do humor, as can Emma, but that’s a very, very rare combination to find, in an actor. You become increasingly aware of how rare that is, as you start to try to find that. He’s an exceptional human and an exceptional craftsman, in that regard. 
Webb: I think it emerges from a kind of attitude. There’s a punk rock quality to Peter Parker, that I identified with when I read the comics, and that I really liked. He has this chip on his shoulder. That humor is something that’s so crucial and so part of the DNA of Spider-Man and the comics. I liked a little bit of that wise-ass quality, and Andrew really took a shine to it and was able to pull it off. He hadn’t done a lot of funny movies before this, but he can be very wistful. 
President Obama's campaign tweeted this morning that it raised a little more than $45 million last month -- better than January, but behind its record-setting pace of four years ago.
According to The Live Feed, Mary Elizabeth Ellis will reprise her role as Caroline, the manipulative ex-girlfriend of Nick (Jake Johnson) in the final three episodes of the first season. Nick considers moving in with Caroline, which would open up a room in the apartment. Jess (Zooey Deschanel), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), and Winston (Lamorne Morris) start looking for possible replacements—Lennon will guest star as one of the candidates. The season finale will air on May 8, cementing the first unqualified hit sitcom Fox has premiered in quite some time.
Collider: How much fan did you have with your cameos in The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man?