Here’s today’s latest casting news:

• Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games) will star in the action picture Aurora Rising, which follows a test pilot storyline based on a screenplay by Christian Gudegast (A Man Apart).
• Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs) has joined the mobster biopic Gotti for director Joe Johnston (Captain America: The First Avenger).
• Kate Hudson (Almost Famous) joins Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here, funded partially from crowd-sourced money via Kickstarter.

Hit the jump for more on each casting announcement.

Here are a few casting announcements:

• Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect) and Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace) will star alongside Ryan Reynolds in the psychological thriller Voices, with a script from Michael R. Perry (Paranormal Activity) and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) on board to direct.

• Kate Hudson and Omar Sy (The Intouchables) have joined James Franco in the Henrik Genz (Terribly Happy) helmed film Good People, which will see Genz making his English-language debut.

Hit the jump for more on each of the projects.

The first theatrical trailer for director Mira Nair’s (Monsoon Wedding) adaptation of the Mohsin Hamid novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist has been released online.  The film tells the story of a young Pakistani professor (Riz Ahmed) whose success as a businessman in America takes a turn following the events of 9/11.  The pic is told in a frame story, as Ahmed’s character is being interviewed after the fact in Lahore by an American journalist (Liev Schreiber) who is trying to uncover the truth behind a kidnapping.  The pic looks like a rather engaging thriller that also tackles some serious social issues that our nation faced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film also stars Kiefer Sutherland and Kate Hudson.  The Reluctant Fundamentalist opens on April 26th.

We’ve got a couple of “promising duos” casting stories to report this afternoon.  First up, Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton are attached to star in the comedy And So It Goes….  Per Deadline, Douglas will play “a self-absorbed and eccentric” realtor who is thrown for a loop when his estranged son saddles him with a granddaughter Douglas’ character never knew.  He enlists the help of his “determined and loveable neighbor,” played by Keaton, who pulls him out of his selfish life.  Mark Andrus (As Good As It Gets) wrote the script and PJ Hogan (My Best Friend’s Wedding) is set to direct, with production slated to get underway in the spring.

Hit the jump for news concerning the possible pairing of Ewan McGregor and Kate Hudson.

It looks like Larry David’s comedy feature set up to debut on HBO finally has a name: Clear History.  More important than that oddly ambiguous title is the all-star cast that David and director Greg Mottola (Superbad) have lined up.  We previously reported that Jon Hamm (Mad Men) and Michael Keaton (Batman) were attached to star, but a slew of others have joined the production.  Clear History will also feature Kate Hudson, Bill Hader, Amy Ryan, Eva Mendes, JB Smoove, Danny McBride and Phillip Michael Hall.  Hit the jump for more on Clear History.

Yesterday we got a look at what NBC will be offering by way of scheduling and new series this fall, and now Fox has announced their upcoming 2012 schedule.  As far as shifts for returning series go, the Kiefer Sutherland drama Touch has been moved to Fridays, while Ryan Murphy’s Glee (which has been on a ratings downslide as of late) has been put in the post-X Factor/American Idol slot on Thursday nights.  Moreover, the network announced that Sarah Jessica Parker and Kate Hudson will be doing guest star arcs on Glee for the show’s upcoming fourth season.

As far as new shows go, The Office star Mindy Kaling’s new show, currently titled The Mindy Project (hopefully a temporary title), and the new ensemble comedy Ben and Kate will join Raising Hope and the hit Zooey Deschanel series New Girl on Tuesdays for an all-comedy night.  I’m a huge fan of New Girl and I’m hoping The Mindy Project will be a nice companion show.  Another high profile new series, Kevin Williamson’s serial killer show The Following starring Kevin Bacon, has been slated to premiere at midseason.  Hit the jump to get a look at the full Fox schedule.

We have a couple of quick casting stories to report this morning.  First up, Mia Wasikowska will star opposite Jesse Eisenberg in The Double.  Directed by Richard Ayoade (Submarine) and based on the novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the film stars Eisenberg as a government clerk whose life is destroyed after what he believes to be an exact copy of himself begins working in his office and attempts to ruin his life.  There’s currently no word on Wasikowska’s role in the comedy, but Screen Daily reports that filming is set to begin shooting in the UK in the spring/summer.  Wasikowska will be seen later this year in The Wettest County and she’s also attached to star in Jim Jarmusch‘s crypto-vampire movie Only Lovers Left Alive.  In December, she was reportedly offered the lead female role in Spike Lee‘s remake of Oldboy.

Hit the jump for news on Kate Hudson starring in Everly.

Bill Hader, Kate Hudson, and Josh Gad will lend their voices to the upcoming DreamWorks Animation film Me & My Shadow.  Per THR, the fantasy film stars as a bored shadow (Hader) who is tethered to a timid human (Gad), but gets the excitement he yearns for when a crime in the shadow community propels them into adventure to stop a shadowy villain from taking over the human world.  Hudson will voice Grubb’s love interest in the real-world.

When we reported on the film back in December 2010, Mark Dindal (The Emperor’s New Groove) was set to direct, but he’s been replaced by How to Train Your Dragon‘s head of story, Alessandro Carloni, who will make his directing debut on Shadow.  The film will blend CGI animation (the human world) with hand-drawn animation (the shadow world), and I’m excited to see the result.  Me & My Shadow is due out November 13, 2013.

There are so many romantic comedies, with so many obvious conclusions, that it is midly interesting to watch Something Borrowed – though not because it reinvents the formula. No, it’s fascinating because it seems that the further this formula mutates, the less pleasant it makes its leads to somehow gin up a reason why two people who love each other aren’t having sex. Ginnfer Goodwin and Kate Hudson play old friends, with Hudson on the verge of marrying Colin Egglesfield – only for Goodwin to finally reveal her feelings for Egglesfield. Uh oh. Our review of Something Borrowed on Blu-ray follows after the jump.

Romantic comedies aren’t designed to challenge their audience.  They’re meant as the most disposable of mainstream movies where a couple or an aspiring couple can go on a date, look at the love they want to have, and then leave for a night of necking and heavy petting.  If it were a more mature film and not the cinematic equivalent of a tissue, Something Borrowed would trust its audience to understand that the lead characters are good people who have done a bad thing but not an unforgivable thing.  Instead, the movie twists itself into knots trying to clear our consciences, get us to root for male and female lead, and hate Kate Hudson with every fiber of our being.  John Krasinski does his best to save the film, but it’s not enough to overcome the conceit of watching two people do their best to keep their love alive while sparing the feelings of their obnoxious friend/fiancée.

In the romantic drama Something Borrowed, based on the best-selling novel of the same name, actress Kate Hudson goes against type by playing the Darcy, the best friend of Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin), a woman who realizes her true love is the man that Darcy is about to marry. Best friends since childhood, Darcy and Rachel have a relationship that has become somewhat toxic, with Darcy always getting what she wants and Rachel never speaking up for her own desires. So, when Rachel finally tells Dex (Colin Egglesfield) her true feelings, all hell breaks loose, and the one person that Darcy could always count on does something that very well may be unforgivable.

At the film’s press day, Kate Hudson talked about how fun it was to play such a hilariously self-centered character, the challenge of making a very unlikeable character someone that audiences want to root for, her personal feelings on infidelity, and why the role of Linda Lovelace was appealing enough to make Lovelace her next project. Check out what she had to say after the jump:

I love a good romantic comedy, and so harbored high hopes for Something Borrowed since the early stages of development.  I have heard good things about the Emily Giffin novel/source material, and generally believe Ginnifer Goodwin can do no wrong.  But Kate Hudson in a rom-com is enough to caution anyone familiar with her work over the last decade.

The good news: Hudson is meant to play an awful person, and even gets the biggest laughs in the new trailer despite the presence of John Krasinski.  (Well played, casting director Mandy Sherman.)  See for yourself after the jump.

We have new posters for a pair of films I’m really rooting for in 2011.  The first is Something Borrowed, an adaptation of the first in a series of novels from Emily Giffin.  Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson, Colin Egglesfield, and John Krasinski star.  Hudson’s name is a big red flag, but there are hints that Something Borrowed could be more than your average romantic comedy.

The second is A Better Life (formerly titled The Gardener), the latest from Chris Weitz.  For a brief minute, Weitz was the promising co-director behind the charming About a Boy before he was swallowed up by the big budget filmmaking of The Golden Compass and New Moon.  A Better Life scales things back down to the indie level: a gardener (Demian Bichir) and his son (Jose Julian) scour Los Angeles for a stolen truck vital to their livelihood in this tale inspired by The Bicycle Thief.  Hit the jump to view both posters.

James Franco is in talks to play pornographer Chuck Traynor in Lovelace, a biopic of 1970s porn star Linda Boreman (stage name: Linda Lovelace).  An offer is out to Kate Hudson to play the title role.  Should he sign on, Lovelace would reunite Franco with Howl directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.

Boreman starred in what may be the most famous pornographic film of all time: 1972′s Deep Throat.  She later claimed that she did not consent to the acts you see in Deep Throat — that instead she was coerced by abusive husband Traynor with “an M-16 rifle at her head.”  More background after the jump:

Warner Bros. has released their preview kit for 2011 and along with it they’re providing the first look at Sherlock Holmes II, The Hangover Part II, and Horrible Bosses. There’s also images for The Rite, Unknown, Hall Pass, Red Riding Hood, Sucker Punch, Born to Be Wild, Something Borrowed, Apparition, Final Destination 5, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.  Hit the jump to check out the high-resolution synopses and images from these films plus synopses  for Crazy Stupid Love, Green Lantern, Dolphin Tale, Contagion, Happy Feet 2, and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.