It looks like Reese Witherspoon is quite eager to reunite with her Walk the Line crew.  The Oscar winner recently signed on to star in Walk the Line director James Mangold’s memoir adaptation Three Little Words, and now she’s joining Joaquin Phoenix in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of the Thomas Pychon novel Inherent Vice.  Set in 1970 Los Angeles, the film follows a pot-smoking private investigator (Phoenix) as he investigates the alleged kidnapping of a woman he used to date.  Deadline reports Witherspoon’s casting, but has no details regarding her role in the film.

Witherspoon is just the latest A-lister to sign on to Anderson’s The Master follow-up, as the filmmaker is assembling a stellar ensemble that thus far includes Benicio Del Toro and Owen Wilson.  As production is gearing up to begin soon, expect to hear more casting news in the coming weeks.  [Update: The Wrap adds two new cast members.  Jena Malone is expected to play a former drug addict who asks Phoenix's private eye for help—Martin Short has been cast in an unspecified role.]  Hit the jump to read a synopsis for the book.

It appears that The Wolverine director James Mangold has settled on his next project, and it’s looking like it will mark a reunion of sorts for the helmer and his Oscar-winning Walk the Line star Reese Witherspoon.  THR reports that Witherspoon will star in an adaptation of Ashley Rhodes-Courter’s memoir Three Little Words, which Mangold will produce and direct.  Rhodes-Courter entered the child welfare system in Florida at the age of four, and years later an unpaid volunteer discovered the girl and set out to convince her biological mother to surrender her parental rights so that the teen could begin a new life.

Witherspoon will play the volunteer and Amanda Seyfried is in talks to play the young girl’s biological mother.  The project, written by Lewis Colick (The Fighter) and Michael Petroni, marks a bit of a palate clenser for the versatile Mangold after The Wolverine, but he’s already proven adept at the Western (3:10 to Yuma), biopic (Walk the Line), and action-comedy (Knight and Day) genres so one presumes he’ll do a fine job with the drama-leaning Three Little Words.  Production is hoping to begin this September in Florida.  Hit the jump to read a synopsis for the memoir.

Reese Witherspoon is in early talks to star opposite Keanu Reeves in the sci-fi romance Passengers.  Directed by Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones), the story takes place on a spacecraft that is transporting thousands of people to a distant colony.  A malfunction in one of its sleep chambers causes a single passenger to awake 90 years before everyone else, and faced with the prospect of growing old and dying alone, he decides to wake up a second passenger.  This is also called the “Complete Lack of Options” play.   According to THR, the production plans to shoot in the tax-break-friendly Montreal.

Witherspoon will next be seen in the West Memphis Three drama, Devil’s Knot.  The Oscar-winning actress is also attached to adaptations of Men Are from Mars, Women Are From Venus, Pennyroyal’s Princess Boot Camp, and Cheryl Strayed‘s memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail as well as the comedy The Beard.

Jeff Nichols‘ Mud almost has it all.  It’s a sweet coming-of-age story, an adventure, a crime-thriller, and a romance.  Lead actors Tye Sheridan and Matthew McConaughey give outstanding performances as a boy and a man, respectively, who bristle when the world won’t conform to the mythic journey they’ve envisioned.  Nichols gives the movie a sweet, soft, and loving tone that takes the best of identity of the Deep South (i.e. avoids racism), and uses it as a rich backdrop for a captivating tale.  The film’s only flaw comes from implicitly agreeing with the main characters’ immature belief that women are not to be trusted.  To the film’s minor detriment, Nichols doesn’t examine how his characters can grow up when the script embraces such a facile and childish notion.

We saw the first two clips from writer/director Jeff Nichols’ Mud back in May of last year, but now the first trailer has been made available.  Starring Matthew McConaughey (Magic Mike) as a fugitive drifter who finds safe harbor on an island in the Mississippi River, but is discovered and befriended by two teenage boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland).  The trailer gives a great sense of the tension that builds over the course of the picture and hints at the dangerous situation the boys unwittingly become involved in.  Also starring Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepherd, Michael Shannon and Sarah Paulson, Mud opens in limited release on April 26th.  Hit the jump to watch the trailer.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Nick Hornby (An Education) is set to adapt Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, with Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) in the lead. The true-life tale tells of Strayed’s journey to traverse the 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Trail alone after her mother died, her family fractured and her marriage failed, all at the age of 22. Witherspoon will also produce the picture along with Bruna Papandrea and River Road Entertainment’s Bill Pohlad. Hit the jump for comments from Hornby and Witherspoon, as well as a synopsis of the book. 

What happens when two top-notch CIA operatives set their sights on the same woman? Nothing terribly unexpected, so it seems. This Means War, a playful rom-com by Director McG, takes on the task of trying to appease action and romance audiences, and fails to do strike a chord with either.  Hit the jump for our review of the Blu-ray.

Reese Witherspoon (This Means War) is set to return to the world of romantic comedies in The Beard, a Chernin Entertainment picture scripted by Becca Greene (Good Vibes).  The film features Witherspoon’s character growing a beard and attempting to enter a lumberjack competition as a woman who appears in public as a date for gay men, to give the illusion that they’re actually heterosexual.  THR reports that Witherspoon will produce Greene’s first feature script alongside Peter Chernin.

Witherspoon is currently shooting Atom Egoyan’s West Memphis Three picture, Devil’s Knot and has the indie drama Mud, opposite Matthew McConaughey, wrapped up.

Production has officially commenced on two upcoming projects.  First up, filming is underway in Atlanta on the real-life drama Devil’s Knot, directed by Atom Egoyan.  The film stars Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth and follows the true story of the West Memphis 3 case, in which three teenagers were wrongfully charged with murdering three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in the 1990s.  Witherspoon plays the mother of one of the victims, while Firth plays the private investigator hired to look into the case.  The cast also includes Amy Ryan, Dane DeHaan, and Stephen Moyer.

Additionally, production has begun in New York on the relationship drama Very Good Girls.  Directed by Naomi Foner, the film stars Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen as two best friends determined to lose their virginity, only to fall for the same boy.  The cast also includes Boyd Holbrook, Demi Moore, Ellen Barkin, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Skarsgaard, and Clark Gregg.  The score will be composed by Jenny Lewis. Hit the jump to read press releases for both films.

It seems like just about everyone’s talking about Gillian Flynn’s latest novel, Gone Girl, and naturally the property’s film rights became a major get.  Per Deadline, 20th Century Fox is the winning studio, as they apparently acquired the rights for an amount in the range of seven figures.  Pacific Standard’s Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea will produce alongside Leslie Dixon.  The book centers a man whose wife disappears on their fifth wedding anniversary, only to have all roads point to him as the woman’s killer.  No word on whether Witherspoon would also star in Gone Girl, but she’s got a pretty full plate of upcoming projects at the moment.

Flynn will be handling the screenplay herself, and the author has two other feature film adaptations in development.  Amy Adams is attached to star in Dark Places, with Gilles Paquet-Brenner directing, and Paranormal Activity guru Jason Blum is producing Sharp Objects.  Hit the jump to read a synopsis for Gone Girl.

We’ve got a few set photos to share this afternoon.  Briefly:

• Taylor Lautner and Patrick Schwarzenegger were spotted on the set of Adam Sandler’s first-ever sequel, Grown Ups 2.  The young duo were seen doing regular “cool guy” stuff like fiddling with a football, wearing tight jeans, and sporting super neato sunglasses.  The two play members of a fraternity, so the bro-ing out may or may not be in keeping with their characters.
• Rachel McAdams was seen filming a labor scene for director Richard Curtis’ (Love Actually) time travel romantic comedy About Time.
• A pregnant Reese Witherspoon looks eerily like her real-life counterpart in set photos from Devil’s Knot.  The film also stars Colin Firth and follows the true story of the West Memphis 3 case, in which three teenagers were wrongfully charged with murdering three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in the 1990s.

Hit the jump to check out the set photos.

The gestating adaptation of John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus finally has a director and potential star.  Summit Entertainment set Leap Year scribes Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan to write the script in January of last year, and now Deadline reports that top commercials director Bryan Buckley will take the helm with Reese Witherspoon attached to star.  Buckley has earned the nickname “King of the Superbowl” by helming over 40 spots for the national sporting event, and he also directed those creepy Siri commercials and the baseball rivalry campaign between Alec Baldwin and John Krasinski.

Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first we’ve heard of Witherspoon’s involvement with the film.  The Best Actress winner (she won an Oscar, remember?) most recently starred in This Means War and is lined up to join Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz in Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy’s musical One Hit Wonders.  Witherspoon also recently signed on to produce and star in the children’s book adaptation Pennyroyal’s Princess Boot Camp.  Hit the jump to sample Buckley’s work and read a synopsis for the book.  Production on Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is set to get underway in January.

Reese Witherspoon and her newly formed production banner Pacific Standard have acquired the rights to the children’s book series Pennyroyal’s Princess Boot Camp. The upcoming two-book series is described as a modern-day fairy tale “about a school that shapes girls into warrior princesses to battle against an ever-growing terror of wicked witches.” Witherspoon will produce the project with Bruna Papandreas, and is also attached to take a supporting role in the feature film. The books come from author M.A. Larson who worked as an assistant to director Mike Nichols before working as a staff writer on Cartoon Network, Disney XD, Nickelodeon and Discovery Kids. Hit the jump for more.

With the massive success of Glee, it was only a matter of time before creator Ryan Murphy brought a musical to the big screen.  Deadline reports that Murphy has lined up Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon, Cameron Diaz, Beyonce, and Andy Samberg to star in the musical comedy One Hit Wonders.  Murphy will direct and co-write the script with his Glee co-creators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan.  The story “centers on three singers (Paltrow, Witherspoon, and Diaz) who each scored a top hit song in the 1990s before watching their careers go down the drain, and then team up to form a super-group.”  Samberg, in addition to co-starring, will reportedly write music for the film with his The Lonely Island partners Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer.

Hit the jump for my thoughts on the project.

In This Means War, which opens on Valentine’s Day, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy portray the world’s deadliest CIA operatives who are also inseparable partners and best friends…until they fall for the same woman (Reese Witherspoon). Having once helped bring down entire enemy nations, they are now employing their incomparable skills and an endless array of high-tech gadgetry against their greatest nemesis ever – each other.

We sat down at a recent press conference with Tom Hardy, Reese Witherspoon, Chelsea Handler and director McG to talk about what happens when a longstanding personal and professional bond is put to the test. Reese and Tom revealed why their paint ball scene turned into a real ice breaker. Tom talked about working opposite Chris Pine and what happens when two actors with very different fighting styles face off on screen. McG revealed that the DVD will be a Chelsea feast because her raciest jokes had to be dropped to get a PG 13 rating. He also discussed directing a film that’s part comedy, romance, action and thriller and how he had three alternative endings in mind, including one with a homoerotic finish.