Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum: Bryan Singer’s “dark re-telling†of “Jack and the Giant Beanstalk,†Jack the Giant Killer, just got approval from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures. Singer almost bailed on Giant Killer for X-Men: First Class when the script was in limbo, but Warner locked him down and brought in Christopher McQuarrie, who worked with Singer on The Usual Suspects, to do a rewrite. Production will start next year, and rumors about who will play Jack are already going around (first up: Aaron Johnson, from Kick-Ass). [Deadline]
The Bad or the Ugly: Jeremy Davies (Lost, Saving Private Ryan) will play the bad guy in season two of the FX neo-western Justified. He will play “Dickie Bennett, the smartest of three brothers†and a high school rival of Timothy Olyphant’s character Marshal Raylan Givens. Davies’s character will come from a family of weed traffickers, and will walk with a limp that was caused by a fight with Givens. He will presumably hold a grudge. The season starts in February. [HR]
Re-callbacks: Colin Farrell is apparently the front-runner to take the lead role in the upcoming remake of Total Recall. Tom Hardy and Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds) are also on director Len Wiseman’s list to take on a role originally held by the man who is now the sitting governor of California. The big question now is whether Farrell, who is currently slated to shoot for the crime drama By Virtue Fall, is going to be available. [HR]
Marrow: Fox is developing a spinoff from Bones that would revolve around a character, Walter Sharman, that will be introduced in December. The studio has yet to cast the role of Sharman, “a man in his late 20s-30s with highly sought after abilities to find anything†and who “asks offensive, seemingly irrelevant questions which oddly enough turn out to be extremely relevant.†Paging younger Dr. House. [Deadline]