Casting for a notable biopic, a Disney fairy tale, and an indie music drama:

  • Eddie Redmayne is close to landing the lead role in the Stephen Hawking biopic Theory of Everything, which focuses on the relationship bewteen Hawking and his wife.
  • Tracey Ullman is in negotiations to join Disney's Into the Woods, an adaptation of the Broadway musical in which Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Emily Blunt will play classic fairy tale characters.
  • Laura Dern has joins Josh Duhamel, Maria Bello, Lucas Till, and Tom Everett Scott in Strings, the feature directorial debut of Daniel Duran.

More on each project after the jump.

stephen hawking theory of everything

Deadline hears Redmayne is the top candidate to star in Theory of Everything.  Documentarian James Marsh (Man on Wire) will direct from a script by Anthony McCarten.  Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are eying a fall production "actively discussing" the female lead, so we should hear more casting soon.

Rob Marshall (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) will direct Into the Woods, "a darkly comic mashup of classic fairy tales that revolves around a childless baker and his wife (Blunt), who attempt to lift a family curse by journeying into the woods to confront the witch that put the spell on them."  Streep plays a witch, Depp is a wolf. Gyllenhaal and Pine play princes.  According to Heat Vision, Ullman will play the mother of Jack the Giant Killer, a role that has not yet been cast.

The script by Oscar Torres for Strings centers on "a young, drug-addicted DJ (Till), court-ordered to live out the rest of his underage years in the custody of his estranged father."  THR reports Dern will play a downtrodden woman who never returned to normal after he eldest sun died.  Shooting is currently underway in Winnipeg.