Here's today's latest casting news:

  • Elle Fanning is attached to star in How to Talk to Girls at Parties, a John Cameron Mitchell-directed adaptation of a Neil Gaiman short story.
  • Penelope Cruz is in final negotiations to join Louis Letterier's spy comedy, Grimsby, starring Sacha Baron Cohen.
  • Kate Lyn Sheil (You're Next) has joined Guy Pearce, Kristen Stewart, and Nicholas Hoult in Drake Doremus' futuristic indie film, Equals.

Hit the jump for more on each movie.

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First up from Heat Vision is word that Fanning will star in How to Talk to Girls at Parties.  Nominated for a Hugo Award and winning the Locus Award for Best Short Story, Gaiman's 2006 work tells of two teen boys attending a party in 1970s London.  One of them quickly pairs off with a girl, while the other is left to make the best of it and soon finds that the girls are not what they seem.  Adapted by Cameron Mitchell and Philippa Goslett, the movie version will focus on "a schoolboy ‎punk who uses music and art as a way to escape, and a female alien tourist (Fanning) who wants to escape her tour group and explore the most dangerous place in the galaxy, the London suburb of Croydon."

THR reports that Cruz is in final negotiations for Grimsby, a spy comedy that sees a debonair operative (Mark Strong) forced to hide out in his home town alongside his idiotic hooligan brother (Baron Cohen).  Cruz is expected to play a philanthropic corporate leader.  Rebel Wilson, Ian McShane, Gabourey Sidibe and Annbelle Wallis also star.

Finally, Sheil is the latest addition to Equals, which is set in a world where "there is no greed, no poverty, no violence, and no emotion. But a new disease is threatening everyone: SOS, or Switched-On-Syndrome, activating depression, sensitivity, fear, love — and once a person is overtaken, they are sent away and never seen again."  Filming will start next month in Japan and Singapore.