Li Bingbing(Resident Evil: Retribution) is set to star in Paramount Pictures’ Transformers 4. She is the first Chinese actor to join the production, which shoots in China this year. Michael Bay is once again at the helm with Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz and old people actors Kelsey Grammar and Stanley Tucci starring.
I am very happy to be able to join this international production. Thank you Paramount for the invitation!
Transformers 4 will pick up four years after the events of Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon. No word on what role Bingbing plays in the film.
Bay said:
I am excited to have Li Bingbing join our cast and to be shooting portions of the movie in her native China.
Bingbing is an internationally famous and award-winning actress best known in North America for playing deadly assassin Ada Wong in Sony Screen Gems’ Resident Evil: Retribution. She was also Ni-Chang, the White-Haired Witch, in the Jackie Chane fantasy-adventure The Forbidden Kingdom.
“Modern Family” star Sarah Hyland is the latest looker to join the cast of Reliance Entertainment and IM Global’s Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters, an adaptation of Richelle Mead’s bestselling young-adult book series from Mean Girls director Mark Waters and Heathers scribe Daniel Waters.
Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters follows the relationship between 17-year-old Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch) and her vampire BFF Lissa (Lucy Fry) as they attend St. Vladimir’s Academy, a school for vamps who wish to retain their humanity.
Deadline reports that Hyland will take on the role of Natalie, friend to Rose and Lissa and daughter of Academy head Victor (Gabriel Byrne). Additional co-stars include Oblivion stunner Olga Kurylenko as headmistress Kirova and “Nip/Tuck” babe Joely Richardson as vampire queen Tatiana.
Magnet Releasing has released a trailer for Ecuadorian director Sebastián Cordero’s new sci-fi drama Europa Report, starring Sharlto Copley (District 9), Michael Nyqvis (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and Karolina Wydra (“House”). The film premieres on VOD on June 27 and will play selected theaters in August.
Europa Report follows a group of six astronauts on a mission to Jupiter’s moon to search for single-celled life in its hidden ocean. Technical problems soon lead to losing communication with earth and the death of a crew mate… and then things get really bad.
While it’s difficult to get excited about a space movie that has no aliens or robots, the trailer does make the film look promising—although a little more Karolina Wydra and a soundtrack featuring Thomas Dolby’s “Europa” would have really sealed the deal for me.
Olivia Wilde (Tron: Legacy) will star alongside Mark Duplass (“The League”) in Lionsgate’s Reawakening, a Blumhouse (Paranormal Activity) produced medical thriller that follows research students as they discover how to reanimate the dead to dire results.
Variety reports that documentary filmmaker David Gelb (Jiro Dreams of Suishi) will direct Reawakening from a script penned by people who must have really enjoyed Joel Schumacher’s Flatliners, a 1990 sci-fi thriller about med-school students conducting near-death experiments to see what lies in the afterlife.
Wilde, best known for her performance in Tron: Legacy and her long-running role as Thirteen on Fox’s medical drama “House,” is coming off the comedy flop The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Her last two genre offerings were Andrew Niccol’s In Time and Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens.
Showtime has released the first full-length trailer for the eighth and final season of “Dexter,” premiering June 30. The new season picks up six months after Debra Morgan shot and killed Maria LaGuerta to protect her brother Dexter from being exposed as a serial killer.
The trailer provides a glimpse at Debra’s (Jennifer Carpenter) emotional breakdown and regret and introduces a profiler whose insight into serial killers and Dexter’s (Michael C. Hall) past could finally end his Dark Passenger’s journey.
“Grey’s Anatomy” and “Californication” star Camilla Luddington is set to topline Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath’s The Pact II, a sequel to the 2012 sleeper hit from writer and director Nicholas McCarthy, starring Caity Lotz (“Death Valley”).
Deadline reports that Luddington will play June Abbott, an L.A. woman tormented by a string of violent dreams in which people are slaughtered by a killer named Judas. Things only get worse when she starts to see the murders from the killer’s P.O.V.
Luddington is coming off the ninth season of ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” The British stunner broke big in 2012 with roles on HBO’s vampire soap “True Blood” and Showtime’s “Californication,” in which she played Lizzie, a nude nanny and aspiring actress willing to sleep her way into Hollywood.
Luddington also provided the voice and motion capture for video game heroine Lara Croft in Crystal Dynamic’s Tomb Raider reboot.
NBC has released a trailer for “Dracula,” a ten-episode miniseries built around the legendary vampire and his quest for blood and revenge. The show is toplined by Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“The Tudors”) and co-stars Jessica De Gouw (”Arrow”), Katie McGrath (”Merlin”) and Victoria Smurfit (pictured as Lady Jayne).
Set in 1890’s London, the show follows Dracula (Meyers) as he plots vengeance on the descendants of the people who ruined his life many centuries ago. Masquerading as an American entrepreneur, he wreaks havoc up until he meets Mina Murray (De Gouw), a dead-ringer for his deceased wife.
Fox has released a trailer for its upcoming series “Sleepy Hollow,” a re-imagining of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Star Trek Into Darkness) and directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld).
Personally, I find the addition of time travel and Orlando Jones to be extremely unfortunate and think it will most likely make what could have been a creepy horror series bite the dust after a few episodes.
Peep it:
The synopsis reads:
In thismodern-day retelling of Washington Irving’s classic, Ichabod Crane is resurrected and pulled two and a half centuries through time to find that the world is on the brink of destruction and that he is humanity’s last hope, forcing him to team up with a contemporary police officer to unravel a mystery that dates back to the founding fathers.
“Sleepy Hollow” stars Tom Mison (One Day) as Ichabod Crane, Katia Winter (“Dexter”) as his sister Katrina Crane, Nicole Beharie (Shame) and ex-7-Up spokesman Orlando Jones as modern day cops Abbie Archer and Lt. Frank Williams and Richard Cetrone as the infamous Headless Horsesman.
French-Spanish starlet Astrid Bergès-Frisbey is set to co-star alongside Michael Pitt (“Boardwalk Empire”) and Brit Marling (Another Earth) in Mike Cahill’s new sci-fi drama I Origins, the director’s eagerly anticipated follow-up to his 2011 acclaimed feature film debut Another Earth.
According to Deadline, I Origins follows a molecular biologist (Pitt) and his lab assistant (Marling) as they uncover “startling evidence that may fundamentally change society as we know it.” Steven Yeun (“Walking Dead”) also co-stars. No word on his and Bergès-Frisbey’s roles.
Bergès-Frisbey first made waves in the U.S. in 2010 when her natural breasts helped land her the role of mermaid Syrena in Disney Pictures’ blockbuster sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Prior to that, the oft-nude starlet had starred in a string of foreign dramas.
If we could only put a finger on Astrid's popularity.
Mujer Lobo is Spanish for She-wolf. It’s also the title of Argentinian filmmaker Tamae Garateguy’s new erotic frightener about a “multi-faced” female lycan who seduces men to fuck her before turning them into kibble and bits. Starlets Mónica Lairana, Luján Ariza and Guadalupe Docampo each play the she-wolf.
Garateguy tells Cinestel that what drew her to the film was the opportunity to depict violence and sexually provocative themes from a female perspective. Thankfully, that just means showing frivolous amounts of boobs and butts in black-and-white.
