Adventureland: Jason Segel, Jonah Hill, and Jason Schwartzman will headline Universal’s Akiva Schaffer–directed the Adventurer’s Handbook, a comedy about three bored friends who set off on a global journey inspired by Mick Conefrey’s best-selling The Adventurer’s Handbook: Life Lessons From History’s Great Explorers. Hill, Matt Spicer, and Max “Fonzie Jr.†Winkler wrote the screenplay. So who do you think will have to suck rattlesnake venom out of whom? [HR]
Don’t Smoke: Want a Gunsmoke remake? Too bad! CBS Films is mounting a feature reboot of the classic fifties TV Western and has hired Gregory Poirier, the genius behind National Treasure 2, to write the screenplay. The story will retain the show’s setting and hero, Marshal Matt Dillon, but will also feature a “contemporary look and modern action twists,†which we can only imagine means “Transformers.†[Risky Biz Blog/HR]
Life Partner: Josh Duhamel is in talks to star opposite Katherine Heigl in the Warner Bros. romantic comedy Life As We Know It, about a pair of singles whose married friends die in an accident and leave them their orphaned daughter. To lighten things up a little, though, they’ll also bequeath Heigl an entire drawer full of vibrating underpants. [Variety]
Jailbait: Sony has picked up The Experiment, the previously announced directorial debut of Prison Break creator Paul Scheuring — based on the real-life 1971 Standford prison experiment in which a group of regular dudes were asked to act as prisoners and guards, with hilarious consequences — starring Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker. Also, hunky underwear model Travis Fimmel will join the cast in a role that Elijah Wood nearly took. What an unfortunate mix-up that would’ve been! [HR]
Locked In: Jennifer Aniston will star in and Michael Sucsy (HBO’s Grey Gardens) will direct Goree Girls, the true story of an all-female 1940s country band incarcerated in a Texas prison. (See this Texas Monthly article.) There’s currently no word on which lucky actor will play the film’s handsome warden and subsequently appear beside a crying Aniston on the cover of US Weekly’s next “When Will Jen Find Love?†double issue. [Variety]
New Hood: Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way shingle will produce a “Gothic reimagining†of Little Red Riding Hood scripted by Orphan writer David Leslie Johnson. Spoiler alert: The title character will secretly be 40. [Variety]
New Hood: Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way shingle will produce a “Gothic reimagining†of Little Red Riding Hood scripted by Orphan writer David Leslie Johnson. Spoiler alert: The title character will secretly be 40. [Variety]