Sean Rocks: Sean Penn will star in This Must Be the Place, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s English-language debut. Penn will play an aging rock star on a mission to find his father’s ex-Nazi killer, now living as a refugee in the United States. Reason No. 6 why Paolo Sorrentino will save cinema: He made Sean Penn into a rock-star Nazi-hunter. [Variety]
After-Party: Camilla Belle and Tom Wilkinson will star in a remake of the Danish film After the Wedding, as an expatriate running a Mumbai orphanage and the mysterious businessman who donates millions of dollars to the institution, respectively. The critically acclaimed original came out in 2006, meaning we’ve had to wait a whole three years for a watered-down version — shame on you, Hollywood. [Variety]
Black in the Director’s Chair: Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black will make his directorial debut on What’s Wrong With Virginia. Also written by Black, the film will star Jennifer Connolly as a troubled mother and Liam Neeson as a sheriff running for State Senate, whose twenty-year secret affair is jeopardized when their kids start dating. [Variety]
Game Theory: Hey, why not? Battleship — yep, the board game — will get the big-screen treatment with Peter Berg attached to direct. There are no plot details available, although it is known that the movie will be an epic naval adventure of some kind. Meaning it’s almost certain that, at one point in this movie, a stone-faced admiral will actually have to say, in all seriousness, “You sank my battleship.†[HR]
Karl Time: The Ricky Gervais Show, an animated adaptation of Gervais and his partner Stephen Merchant’s popular podcasts, is coming to HBO. The podcasts mostly deal with their producer, Karl Pilkington, a peculiarly dimwitted fellow; his stories, in animated form, will make up the bulk of the show. [Variety]
Danger Horse: Dark Night of the Soul, Danger Mouse and Sparkle Horse’s highly anticipated collaboration, has been scrapped indefinitely owing to unspecified legal issues with EMI. The album — which features Wayne Coyne, Frank Black, Iggy Pop, Julian Casablancas, and others — is streaming on NPR’s website and has leaked, meaning this is all kind of like the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot situation, except nobody will care when it’s eventually released in stores in five months. [Billboard]