Shaun Burke

The revolving door that is the cast of Sheldon Turner’s directorial debut seems to be finally slowing down. Beginning last year, both Colin Farrel and Eric Bana were in talks for By Virtue Fall with Hurt Locker’s Nicolas Chartier producing. Then it was speculated that Farrel was off the project with Jeremy Renner in to take his place.

We have been hearing casting rumours since early-February when Anton Yelchin landed the title role in Odd Thomas, and emerging from a long list of young starlets is Lily Collins, who has read for, and been extended an offer to play the female lead. Collins, daughter of singer/songwriter Phil, beat out a stellar shortlist that included Kat Dennings, Emma Roberts, Addison Timlin and Portia Doubleday to play Stormy Llewellyn, the girlfriend of Yelchin’s Thomas.

Paramount had to look no further than Magnolia Pictures for their latest project – an adaptation of Billy Corben’s documentary Cocaine Cowboys. Optioned awhile back with names like Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg attached, it is now World Trade Center writer Andrea Berloff who'll take over script duties from Generation Kill writer Evan Wright, whose book on the subject, American Desperado: My Life — From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset, will be published in November.

In April of 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico left 11 crewmen dead and caused the largest offshore oil spill in United States history. Less than a year later, Summit Entertainment (on the heels of their new funding agreement) and Participant Media are developing a feature about the BP Oil disaster with backing from Imagenation Abu Dhabi.

It’s been reprinted 163 times, sold over 100 million copies and translated into over 40 different languages, so it comes as no surprise that, in an era of Hollywood producers scraping the bottom of the barrel for new ideas, a hugely popular book like Khalil Gibran’s masterpiece The Prophet will be adapted for the big screen.