Michelle Monaghan and Susan Sarandon are set to team up for the thriller Still of the Night.  Exclusive Media announced today that it would produce and finance the pic, written and to be directed by Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines).  Monaghan stars as a career woman who sets out to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her sister.  She ends up matching wits with a devious criminal, played by Sarandon, in order to save her and her sister.  If memory serves me right, Sarandon has never played such a straight-up villain before (I’m counting Stepmom as a half-villain).  It should be interesting to see the two talented actresses square off.

Mostow’s last film, the 2009 sci-fi actioner Surrogates, wasn’t exactly a runaway hit with critics or audiences, but he’s off to a great start on Still of the Night by nabbing actors of Monaghan and Sarandon’s caliber.  Hit the jump to read the press release.

We just shared the first images of Liam Neeson being a badass in Taken 2, and now official word comes that he’s set to topline an adaptation of Lawrence Block’s crime novel A Walk Among the Tombstones.  Moreover, Scott Frank is set to direct from a script that he wrote.  The film centers on an alcoholic ex-cop who investigates the kidnapping of a heroin drug lord’s wife.  Last we heard, D.J. Caruso (Disturbia) was in talks to direct Frank’s script, but today Exclusive Media and Cross Creek Pictures have announced that Frank himself will be stepping into the director’s chair.

Frank wrote and directed the 2007 crime pic The Lookout, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, of which I’m a big fan.  The director took an atypical approach to the visuals and crafted some seriously interesting characters, so I feel confident that A Walk Among the Tombstones won’t simply be another bland, “gritty actioner with a male lead” that gets lost in the shuffle.  Neeson’s a busy guy, so production on Tombstones won’t get underway until February 2013 in New York City.  Nevertheless, this is definitely a project to keep an eye on.  Hit the jump for the press release.