Fangtastic: Kate Beckinsale is returning for Underworld 4, reprising her role as vampire heroine Selene. The producers are currently searching for a director, as well as an actress to play the role of Selene’s daughter. Making their job easier, almost every young actress these days has a vampire role on her résumé. [HR]
Fairy Land: Kimberly Peirce (Boy’s Don’t Cry) will direct Wicked Lovely, based on Melissa Marr’s fantasy novel. The book tells the story of a teenage girl who can “see the hidden fairy world, but confronts danger†when the fairies discover her ability and also when a king decides she “must be his bride.†Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands, Corpse Bride) is adapting the novel. With this and the developments on True Blood this season, it would seem fairies are primed to become the Next Big Thing. [HR]
Tres Jolie: Angelina Jolie has selected Zana Marjanovic to play the leading role in Jolie’s directorial debut. Marjanovic will play a Bosnian woman who is in love with a Serbian man during the Bosnian War. Marjanovic, a Bosnian native, said the screenplay was “fabulous†and that she was excited to begin work with Jolie, whom she called “a great actress and humanist.†[HR]
Bourne Meets Sunshine: Warner Bros. has picked up Family Getaway, an action spec script from newcomers Jeremiah Friedman and Nick Palmer. The story, described as a “Jason Bourne movie crossed with Little Miss Sunshine,†sees a man’s Thanksgiving at his parents’ home get crashed by rival assassins, which results in the man having to take his family on “a cross-country adventure in their station wagon.†[Heat Vision/HR]
A McCullers Movie: Deborah Kampmeier (Hounddog) will direct Lonely Hunter, a biopic of author Carson McCulllers. Sarah Schulman wrote the script based on her play Carson McCullers (Historically Inaccurate). The film will track 35 years in the life of the novelist, who died in 1967 at the age of 50. [Variety]
New Orleans Bound: Jon Seda (The Pacific) now has a permanent gig at HBO. He’ll join the cast of Treme as a series regular, playing a “politically connected developer and venture capitalist from Dallas†who gets involved in the post-Katrina renewal efforts. [Deadline]
Let Loose: Warner Bros. has acquired the spy thriller spec script Unlocked, written by Peter O’Brien, about a female CIA interrogator who gets “thrust … into the middle of a plot to plan a devastating biological attack in London.†O’Brien penned the script in 2007, and it earned a spot on the 2008 Black List. [Variety]