Hanks to Lie With Sleeping Dogs?: Tom Hanks is circling a role in Sleeping Dogs, Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to The Hurt Locker. The film — set in a “haven for organized crime†in the border zone between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil — centers on five men who work together in the area. The project, previously known as Triple Frontier, will be scribed by Mark Boal, who wrote The Hurt Locker. A whole bunch of A-listers’ names have been brought up in association with the project, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Sean Penn, and Locker’s Jeremy Renner. [Heat Vision/HR]
Duo Joins Rider: Idris Elba (Obsessed) and Johnny Whitworth (The Dark Fields) are in negotiations to join the cast of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, the sequel to 2007’s Ghost Rider. The story begins with Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider (Nicolas Cage) “struggling to repress his curse†in remote Eastern Europe. He’s then recruited by a sect to combat the devil (Ciaran Hinds) who is attempting to “take over his mortal son’s body.†Elba will play an “alcoholic warrior monk†searching for Ghost Rider; Whitworth will portray a criminal recruited by the devil to find the son. [Heat Vision/HR]
Members Only: HBO is developing a single-camera comedy series based on The Member-Guest, a 1995 book by Clint McCown. Kevin Bacon is executive producing the project, and will likely star in it. The series follows a “burned-out golf pro†who is looking for a comeback on the tour. However, he is continually coming up against the members of his country club who are “grappling with dashed dreams of their own.†The other executive producers on the project are Aaron Kaplan of Kapital Entertainment, Tom Mangan, and Pink. Yes … that Pink. [Deadline]
Two for Alda: Alan Alda has signed on for two different projects at Universal. He’ll play the head of a naturist village in Wanderlust, about a married couple (Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd) who attempt to “escape modern society†by moving out of New York. And he’ll play a “Bernie Madoff–type Wall Street capitalist†in Tower Heist, in which Ben Stiller is the manager of a tower residence who leads a team to pull off a heist on its penthouse tenant, Alba’s character. [HR]
The Right One: Tomas Alfredson, director of Let the Right One In, will helm Larklight, a Warner Bros. period fantasy. The film, adapted from a 2006 book by Philip Reeve, is set in a “Victorian-era alternate universe†in which a brother-sister duo teams with some “renegade space pirates†to — what else? — save the world from destruction at the hands of a madman. Steve Knight (Eastern Promises) has been tasked with rewriting the script for the project. [Heat Vision/HR]
Three in River: Ray Liotta, Ving Rhames, and Christian Slater will star in the indie film The River Sorrow, directed by Rich Cowen and written by Steve Anderson. The movie is focused on a detective (Liotta) who chases after a serial killer. Slater will play an FBI agent presiding over the case; Rhames will play Liotta’s friend and captain. [Variety]