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Casting Tidbits: David Strathairn, Carey Mulligan, and Nicole Kidman

by Ethan Anderton
June 28, 2011

Casting Tidbits feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange. First up, DreamWorks sent over a press release today saying David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck) will be playing Secretary of State William Seward in Steven Spielberg's historical biopic Lincoln. Strathairn joins an amazing cast that already includes the amazing Daniel Day-Lewis as our 16th president Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as his wife Mary Todd Lincoln. Production begins this fall in Virginia and it sounds like the film will hit theaters in late 2012 for an Oscar-qualifying run.

Second, Variety reports Carey Mulligan is attached to star in a new sci-fi action film called Outback. Director Gary Ross (currently working on The Hunger Games) will helm the feature whose plot is being kept under wraps. The only detail known, as if we needed to guess, is that the story is set in the Australian outback. The script comes from Nissar Modi (Z for Zachariah) based on an original idea he crafted with Ross. GK Films, the company behind hits like The Town and Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Hugo Cabret is producing.

Next, THR reports Nicole Kidman will be stepping in for Sofia Vergara in Lee Daniels' next film The Paperboy. Apparently Tobey Maguire left the production recently, and when that pushed the shooting schedule back, it ran into Vergara's shooting of "Modern Family." However, Matthew McCounaughey and Zac Efron are still on board the story about a reporter and his brother who investigate the events surrounding a murder in order to exonerate a man on death row. Kidman would play a woman with a dark side who writes letters to men on death row and ends up bringing the case to the attention of the reporter and developing a relationship with him.

Finally, Variety reports Rosario Dawson has snagged the lead female role in Fire with Fire, a new indie drama starring Bruce Willis, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson and Josh Duhamel. In addition, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Vincent D'Onofrio, Richard Schiff, Vinnie Jones and Bonnie Sommerville have also signed on to star in the story of a fireman in the witness protection program (Duhamel) who takes matters into his own hands when he's threatened by the man against whom he's set to testify. David Barrett is directing from a script by Tom O'Connor.

That's all for this edition of Casting Tidbits. Be sure to stay tuned for even more casting news on the way.

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