Gangbangers Don’t Cry: Kimberly Peirce, the director of Boys Don’t Cry and Stop-Loss, has picked her next project, which will only be her third feature. She’ll be making The Knife for Universal Pictures, which is based on a GQ story about “a South Central gang member who became a paid FBI informant.†Brian Grazer will produce. [Deadline]
Blow Up Dolls: Michael Bay and Taylor Lautner are working together on a hush-hush action movie that’s being described as “Mr & Mrs Smith meets Wanted.†Maybe like James McAvoy in Wanted, Lautner learns his father is a professional assassin, and then, like Brad Pitt in Smith, that his girlfriend is one too? Either way, there’s gotta be a part for an Angelina Jolie wannabe in here. [Digital Spy]
Dame Maria: Maria Bello steps up to fill some big, Helen Mirren–size shoes. The veteran actress will play the lead role in NBC’s Peter Berg–led adaptation of the British detective series Prime Suspect, the part that made Mirren Mirren. [Live Feed/HR]
Do Androids Dream of the Science of Sleep? Michel Gondry is adapting Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, about a guy who works at a security firm that specializes in dealing with telepathy and other sci-fi-ish abilities, and gets a job on the moon, where everything goes all wrong. Basically, after The Green Hornet, Gondry is getting down to working on a movie that sounds like a Michel Gondry movie. [Playlist/Indiewire]
The Doctor’s In: Christine Lahti, who co-starred in Chicago Hope and was once in the bathroom when she won a Golden Globe award, will play a doctor once again, in CBS’s pilot called, you guessed it, The Doctor, from the creator of the CW’s short-lived (but great!) Privileged. Lahti will play “a mother who reconnects with her adult children when she joins the family medical practice.†[Live Feed/HR]
Bunny Suit: The Tony award winning Laura Benanti (Gypsy) has signed on to NBC’s Mad Men rejoinder Playboy, about a Playboy club in 1963 Chicago. Amber Heard was already cast as the new bunny on the scene: Benanti will play an established, star bunny who will inevitably either feel threatened or take Heard under her paw. [Deadline]