Unfortunately, not as Capt. James T. Kirk in a new Star Trek adventure anytime soon. Instead, Pine is looking to make a whole lot of funny money in his next gig. Variety reports he and director D.J. Caruso (Eagle Eye, Disturbia) are in talks to do The Art of Making Money, based on the real story of Art Williams, a Chicago man who rose from petty theft to become a master counterfeiter. That just reminds me of my favorite movie counterfeiter — Willem Dafoe in To Live and Die in L.A.
In other casting news: How the youth get Restless. Young Australian actress Mia Wasikowska, soon to be known as Alice in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, is in negotiations to star in Gus Van Sant’s dark coming-of-age drama Restless, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Beating out a few actresses, Wasikowska won the coveted role, which delves into the complex tale of a teenage boy and girl who share a preoccupation with mortality. Dark indeed, but sounds right up Mia’s alley, since she’s already played a suicidal teen in the first season of In Treatment.
Kristen Bell is gonna sing and dance? Apparently so. She has signed on to co-star as Christina Aguilera’s rival in Burlesque, a movie in which Aguilera plays a country bumpkin who comes to L.A. to find her love and success as a cabaret performer in a hip neo-burlesque club. According to the Reporter, Bell will play “Nikki, the loose-cannon lead dancer and main attraction at the club who spirals out of control when Aguilera’s character suddenly gets the spotlight.” And Cher is playing the nightclub owner. That’s an eclectic cast.
Finally, indie darling and recent Oscar nominee Melissa Leo is set to star in the drama The Space Between. She’ll play a flight attendant who gets stuck in Texas with a young Arab-American boy on Sept. 11, 2001 and then takes the kid on an urgent road trip to New York when she finds out the boy’s father worked at the World Trade Center. I’m thinking Leo might want to do a comedy at some point in her career, just to lighten things up a little? Maybe?