Check out the latest casting news below:

• Christian Slater (Broken Arrow) and Justin Long (Live Free or Die Hard) join the indie drama Undiscovered Gyrl, an adaptation of Allison Burnett’s novel which Burnett himself will direct.
• Connie Nielsen (Gladiator) has joined the latest McG project, previously reported as Three Days to Kill.  The pic is a darkly comic action thriller that involves a Secret Service agent who comes out of retirement for one last mission in exchange for a drug that could save his life.
• Ben Mendelsohn (Killing Them Softly) is in talks to join Mississippi Grind, a road trip pic of sorts with a plot focused on gambling addiction.  The indie also stars Jake Gyllenhaal who will produce.

Hit the jump for more on each picture.

Director McG has found his leading lady for the upcoming action thriller Three Days to Kill.  Variety reports that Amber Heard (The Rum Diary) is set to star opposite Kevin Costner in the pic for Relativity Media.  The script was written by Luc Besson and Adi Hasak and centers on a dying Secret Service agent (Costner) who decides to retire in order to spend time with his estranged family.  Heard has been set in the lead female role of “a woman who offers him access to an experimental drug that could save his life in exchange for one last assignment, which Costner must complete while coping with the drug’s hallucinatory side effects.”  One imagines McG will try to bring the very visual premise to life with some innovative camera work, so here’s hoping for the best.

Heard most recently wrapped roles in Robert Rodriguez’s sequel Machete Kills and the corporate thriller Paranoia opposite Liam Hemsworth.

We have a couple of quick casting stories for you this morning.  First up, I’m pleased to report that Kasi Lemmons‘ gospel musical Black Nativity has finally found a lead actor by casting Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker.  As we previously reported, both Samuel L. Jackson and Lawrence Fishburne passed on the movie, which follows a young black teen who spends Christmas with his estranged grandparents.  Through his grandfather’s Christmas Eve sermon and a stylized, dream-sequence retelling of the classic Nativity story, he learns about the importance of faith and family.  According to Blackfilm, “Whitaker is expected to play multiple characters during the Nativity sequence.”  Angela Bassett will play the boy’s grandmother, and Jennifer Hudson will play the mother.  As a big fan of Lemmons’ last film, Talk to Me, I’m glad that production is set to begin in January 2013.

Hit the jump for casting news on McG‘s action film starring Kevin Costner.

Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves) is being courted for substantial roles in a pair of upcoming films.  While Costner’s recent work was on the small screen in the History channel’s Hatfields & McCoys, he’ll next be seen on the big screen as Pa Kent in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.  Now, reports have Costner being courted for Kenneth Branagh’s Jack Ryan film reboot which stars Chris Pine, as well as a Luc Besson production, Three Days to Kill.  Hopefully this is a kickstart to seeing more of Costner in features again.  More on both of these projects after the jump.