Carter Cast: Friday Night Lights’ Taylor Kitsch has landed the title role in John Carter of Mars, an adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book series — about a Civil War vet mysteriously transported to Mars who gets involved with the warring races of the dying planet — which Disney hopes will bloom into a franchise. (Also, Lynn Collins will play Dejah Thoris, “heir to the throne of Mars’s Helium kingdom,†whatever that means.) Apparently Kitsch landed the role against stiff competition: Disney considered a bunch of actors for the role over the past few months, including Josh Duhamel and Jon Hamm (?). They really shouldn’t have worried too much — seeing as Carter will be directed by Pixar’s Andrew Stanton (his first live-action movie), it’s already guaranteed at least half a billion dollars. [HR]
Bond Bunch: Frost/Nixon’s Peter Morgan will join screenwriting duo Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (The Italian Job) on the script for the next James Bond flick. There are no plot details yet available, but we do know that Daniel Craig will return and that the project’s aiming for a 2011 release. Which leaves really only one question: Can the trio come up with a worse title than Quantum of Solace? [Variety]
King of the Cowboys: Production company 821 Entertainment is planning a Roy Rogers resurgence: They’re considering a film trilogy, an animated TV show, games, and other various projects. The movies will be family fantasy-adventures based on Rogers’s character, established in over 88 Westerns he made in the forties and fifties. Marketers believe the biggest challenge will be convincing moviegoers that Rogers is more than a crappy place to get burgers while on the Chinatown bus to Boston. [Variety]
Crowes Fly Again: The Black Crowes will release their latest album, Before the Frost… , on September 1. Purchases of the album will come with a download code for a second new Crowes album, …Until the Freeze. There are twenty tracks altogether, nineteen originals, plus a cover of Stephen Stills’s “So Many Times.†In related news, the Black Crowes apparently also put out albums in 2006 and 2008. [Billboard]
You Stay Classy, VH1: VH1’s latest reality show, currently known as The OCD Project, will track a bunch of people with severe cases of the disease as they live together and seek treatment. But no gawking here — this is all about understanding the disease and helping people get better, according to JD Roth, the executive producer at 3 Ball, the show’s production company: “3 Ball’s brand has always been about transformation.†Roth did not go into detail as to where, exactly, 3 Ball–produced Scott Baio Is 45 and Single fit into the company’s altruistic M.O. [Variety]
More A Lot: Since its first run inexplicably got 10 million viewers, CBS will air three more editions of I Get That A Lot, the stupid hidden-camera special where annoying celebrities work normal-people jobs. Whatever — anything to keep Jessica Simpson employed, we suppose. [HR]