We’ve got a few casting stories to share this evening.  Briefly:

• The very funny Bill Hader is in talks to star in the indie comedy Lawless, produced by Mike White and David Bernad.
• Hailee Steinfeld has been tapped to star opposite Sam Worthington in director Phillip Noyce’s thriller For the Dogs.
• Billy Crystal will lead the retirement community sex comedy Winter’s Discontent for director Frank Oz.
• Shameless star Jeremy Allen White has landed the lead in DreamWorks’ found-footage time travel film Glimmer.

Hit the jump for more on all of the aforementioned films.

This week on Blu-ray a number of 2012 titles hit home video in the absence of older films.  Briefly:

• The Apparition (Blu-ray+DVD+UltraViolet Digital Copy Combo Pack) – $19.99 (33% off)
• Lawless [Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy] – $22.99 (43% off)
• Luck: The Complete First Season [Blu-ray] – $50.99 (36% off)
• Men in Black 3 (Two Disc Combo: Blu-ray / DVD + UltraViolet Digital Copy) – $19.99 (51% off)
• ParaNorman (Two-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet) – $27.99 (44% off)
• Sparkle (+UltraViolet Digital Copy) [Blu-ray] – $19.96 (45% off)
• Step Up Revolution [Blu-ray + 3D Blu-ray + Digital Copy] – $19.99 (50% off)

Hit the jump for all the details.

When it comes to period pieces, I am a shallow man.  Put beautiful women (Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska), strapping men (Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman), and Shia LaBeouf in Prohibition-era costumes, and I am 80% sold on your movie.  Thankfully, director John Hillcoat took care of the other 20% with Lawless and delivered a taut, beautifully bloody crime drama.

To promote the November 27 Blu-ray/DVD release, Anchor Bay and The Weinstein Company sent us a set of stylish publicity photos.  I would call them effortlessly cool, but I respect the attention to detail too much.  Check out the images after the jump.

Dane DeHaan is having a great year.  After appearing on TV series like In Treatment and True Blood, DeHaan starred this year in Josh Trank‘s Chronicle, then acted alongside Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy in Lawless, and now he’s one of the leads in director Derek Cianfrance‘s much buzzed about new film, The Place Beyond the Pines, which premiered to glowing reviews at this week’s Toronto International Film Festival (watch two clips here).  In addition, he recently wrapped on director John Krokidas‘ Kill Your Darlings, where he starred alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Elizabeth Olsen.

Shortly before the premiere of the film at TIFF, I sat down with DeHaan for an extended interview.  We talked about the past year, how he prepares for his roles, what it was like to work for Cianfrance and make The Place Beyond the Pines, who he plays in Kill Your Darlings and what its about, and what he might have coming up.  Hit the jump to watch.

This week on The Collision, we look back at the highs and lows of summer 2012, reflect on summer 2011, and look ahead to summer 2013.  We also talk about John Hillcoat‘s Lawless, and finish up with our recommendations.

Click here to listen to the new episode of The Collision, click here for the previous episode (“Sacred Franchises and Premium Rush“), click here to add the podcast to your RSS, and click here to find us on iTunes. To keep up to date with The Collision, you can follow us on Twitter at @MattGoldberg, @AdamChitwood, and @DrClawMD (Dave Trumbore). Hit the jump to check out the trailers for this week’s recommendations.

I wasn’t expecting fireworks over Labor Day weekend, so I shouldn’t be disappointed that none materialized. As expected, The Possession dethroned The Expendables 2 to bring summer 2012, officially, to a close.

I have a confession to make: I’ve dropped too much cash on sweet, sweet movie poster prints and frames the last month or so. In addition to my Mondo/Jock The Dark Knight Rises print (which was secured for me by my friend and fellow Collider teammate, Bill Graham), I’ve also picked up Mondo/Phantom City Creative’s The Cabin in the Woods and this little Drive gem by artist Louis Fernando Cruz all in a matter of a few weeks. While I couldn’t be any happier with my purchases (well, I could have stood to pay a little less for The Cabin in the Woods), the truth remains that I’m quickly running out of wall space and disposable income. With all of this in mind, I do have to give a big “thank you” to my wife for tolerating my plans to adorn our house with movie posters. I’ve promised her that my buying flurry will now subside. Unless, of course, someone out there has a Gallery 1988/Rhys Cooper Robocop print they want to part with on the cheap, in which case, I think I have just enough wall space and unaccounted for monies to make one last purchase.

Poster hunting aside, in this week’s edition of the Top 5, I’ve compiled for your reading pleasure our Lawless interviews with Shia LaBeouf, screenwriter/composer Nick Cave, and more, a week filled with rumors surrounding Warner Bros.’ Justice League pic, For a Good Time, Call… video interviews with Ari Graynor, Lauren Miller, and more, a well deserved red-band trailer for The To Do List, and some encouraging, some not so encouraging, news from the set of director Jose Padilha‘s Robocop reboot. A brief recap and link to each awaits after the jump.

Labor Day weekend has never been known for its extravagant grosses, and 2012’s holiday certainly won’t be bucking any trends. Lionsgate’s The Possession took Friday bragging rights (such as they were) with an estimated $6.1 million from 2,816 locations. Producer Sam Raimi’s supernatural thriller should remain on top through Monday with a projected $17 million over four days. The Weinstein Co.’s Lawless was second on Friday, after opening two days earlier in 2,888 locations. The drama featuring Shia LeBoeuf and Gary Oldman is expected to earn at least $15 million by the end of the long holiday weekend. Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure also opened on Wednesday – in seventeenth place. The children’s film is expected to collect less than one million from its 2,160 locations through Sunday – just shy of the record for the lowest wide release of all time. On Labor Day, you take your news where you can get it.

Directed by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave, Lawless tells the story of the infamous Bondurant Brothers, three bootlegging siblings in Prohibition-era Virginia. Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf) are entrepreneurs with a thriving local moonshine business, until corrupt and lethal Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) shows up from Chicago to take a piece of what the brothers have built.  The film is adapted from author Matt Bondurant’s The Wettest County in the World and also stars Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska and Dane DeHaan.  For more on Lawless, now playing in theaters, here’s the red band trailer and five clips.

Recently I spoke with producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher.  During my exclusive interview we talked about the difficult process of landing financing, casting, how they achieved the period setting while shooting just outside Atlanta, deleted scenes, the current climate for trying to produce midsize projects, and more.  In addition, with Wick and Fisher also producing The Great Gatsby, we talked a bit about that project.  Hit the jump to watch.

“It is not the violence that sets men apart,” Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy) tells his younger brother Jack (Shia LaBeouf) in John Hillcoat‘s Lawless.  “It is the distance he is prepared to go.”  The film presents two approaches to the gangster world: the imagined and the practical.  Jack dreams of being a gangster without the violence.  Forrest doesn’t need the gangster flash, but he is willing to take a pair of brass knuckles and punch out someone’s throat.  Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave take a curious look at how two men approach the violence that must be done in order to ensure their survival, and ask themselves what they’re surviving for.  Is it for family?  Is it for personal pride?  Between Jack and Forrest, there’s a serious, meditative story.  But beyond them lies distractions of half-developed romances and a cartoonish villain.

Lawless – adapted from author Matt Bondurant’s fictionalized account of his family, The Wettest County in the World – tells the story of the infamous Bondurant Brothers, three bootlegging siblings in Prohibition-era Virginia.  Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf) are entrepreneurs with a thriving local moonshine business, until corrupt and lethal Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) shows up from Chicago to take a piece of what the brothers have built, threatening everything that they represent.  Directed by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave, the film also stars Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska and Dane DeHaan.

At the film’s press day, Collider got the opportunity to participate in a roundtable and 1-on-1 interview with screenwriter/music composer Nick Cave, in which he talked about how he ended up as the screenwriter on Lawless, what led him to transition into writing films, how he’s always been a visual writer regardless of the medium, making the villain more flashy for Guy Pearce, collaborating with the actors for 10 days prior to shooting, how his scoring collaboration with Warren Ellis works, detaching from the script to enjoy the finished product, how the original cut was about three hours long, and his reluctant cameo in the film.  He also talked about being more interested in collaborating with John Hillcoat than with being a screenwriter for hire, the possibility that he could produce and compose the soundtrack for Guillermo del Toro’s stop-motion Pinocchio, and what happened to The Threepenny Opera that he met with Andy Serkis about doing.  Check out what he had to say after the jump. 

Lawless – adapted from author Matt Bondurant’s fictionalized account of his family, The Wettest County in the World – tells the story of the infamous Bondurant Brothers, three bootlegging siblings in Prohibition-era Virginia. Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf) are entrepreneurs with a thriving local moonshine business, until corrupt and lethal Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) shows up from Chicago to take a piece of what the brothers have built, threatening everything that they represent. Directed by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave, the film also stars Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska and Dane DeHaan.

At the film’s press day, co-stars Shia LaBeouf and Dane DeHaan (who plays Jack’s loyal friend, Cricket) talked about bringing these characters from another era to life, establishing a rapport with each other to build their on screen friendship, the parallels between the Prohibition era and the drug problem today, their favorite memories on the film, getting to sample moonshine, and what they each look for in acting roles. LaBeouf also talked about his sensibilities, as an actor, and the greater appreciation he has for directing, now that he’s delved into directing a bit and gotten to experiment with some shorts. Check out what they had to say after the jump.

This past week presented me with a couple of unique moviegoing opportunities. In addition to the ParaNorman showing I previewed the last time we met, I was also able to check out one of my all-time favorites, Jaws, on the big screen thanks to Cinemark’s “Fall Classic Series”. For as much as I enjoyed the pic long before this week’s showing, I have to say that viewing it as an audience member in a packed theater for the first time opened my eyes to a whole new appreciation. Not only was I genuinely startled in a few scenes that repeat television and DVD viewings had long left me numb to, but I also came to respect Robert Shaw’s timeless turn as Quint even more than I previously had. In short, my adoration for Spielberg‘s masterpiece was not only reaffirmed, it somehow found a way to expand.

But enough about my love of all things Jaws related. This week’s Top 5 includes the news that James Gunn is in talks to direct Marvel’s intergalactic tale, Guardians of the Galaxy, Sight & Sound’s personal Top 10 lists from some of cinema’s most revered directors (Spoiler Alert: that shark movie I drooled about in the opening paragraph appears on Tarantino‘s), a new red-band trailer for John Hillcoat‘s Lawless, Disney’s plans to reboot The Rocketeer, and an animated look at how The Dark Knight Rises should have ended. A brief recap and link to each can be found after the jump.

Many projects go through growing pains during development.  James Cameron’s Titanic was labeled the biggest bomb of all time before it even hit theaters, Martin Sheen had a heart attack during the year-long shoot of Apocalypse Now, and filming on Men in Black 3 halted for a few months so that they could work on the script.  David O. Russell’s Nailed, however, was a bona fide production nightmare.  The film has yet to be finished and it’s unlikely it’ll ever see the light of day, but none of this is the fault of the creatives involved.

The political comedy satire was filmed in 2008 with Jessica Biel, Jake Gyllenhaal, Catherine Keener, and Tracy Morgan and centered on three people with serious health issues that stormed Washington D.C. to demand treatment. Production was shut down multiple times during filming, and just as Russell was getting to the filming of the film’s centerpiece scene the project was shut down for good.  The story behind Nailed’s filming and subsequent permanent limbo is stranger than fiction, and Steve recently got a lot of background on what exactly went down from producers Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher (of Red Wagon Entertainment) when he spoke with them in anticipation of the release of Lawless.  Hit the jump for the full story.

If you enjoyed the five clips from director John Hillcoat’s Lawless we posted earlier today, you’re going to love this new red-band trailer.  It features good old-fashioned tar and feathering, blood-letting, shoot ‘em ups and even an imposing dust storm. That all fits right at home in the Depression-era drama that follows the bootlegging Bondurant family in their backlash against the law enforcement officials who are trying to taking a cut of the profits.

Lawless, starring Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Guy Pearce and Gary Oldman, opens August 31st.  Hit the jump to check out the red-band trailer.