We have a few casting stories for you this morning.  Briefly:

  • Jeremy Irons and Sienna Miller will join Tom Hiddleston in Ben Wheatley's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's High-Rise.
  • Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder will lead the biopic Experimenter, The Stanley Milgram Story.
  • Zach Galifanakis has signed on to Justin Chadwick's period romance Tulip Fever.
  • Gerard Butler is set to star in the heist drama Den of Thieves.

Hit the jump for more details on these casting bits.

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According to Screen Daily, Jeremy Irons and Sienna Miller have boarded High-Rise.  The story "takes place in a tower block, which is supposed to be a gleaming new, exciting and exotic home for its affluent residents, but ends up isolating and dividing them into all-out war, with the surface sophistication degenerating to primal savagery."  Tom Hiddleston plays young doctor Rober Laing, who becomes seduced by the building's visionary architect Anthony Royal (Irons), and strikes up a relationship with Royal's aide, Charlotte (Miller).  Eventually, Laing meets Wilder, a charismatic provocateur bent on inciting the situation, and discovers the festering class warfare that will explode into violence.

Casting is still underway, and production will begin in July and shoot in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Moving on, THR reports that Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder will lead the biopic Experimenter, The Stanley Milgram Story (hopefully, they'll drop that second part; "the [person] story" is reserved solely for cheap TV movies).  Written and directed by Michael Almereyda (2000's Hamlet), the story is based on social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who in 1961 designed the obedience experiments at Yale as well as the Small-World Experiment.  The former had ordinary people believing they were administering painful electrical shocks to a stranger; the latter was the basis for Six Degrees of Separation.  Per THR, Sarsgaard is playing Milgram, while Ryder is playing one of his students, Sasha Menkin, who helps with the experiments and with whom he falls in love."  Is there anything more romantic than observing the deep, sadistic desires of test subjects?  No.  No, there is not.

In a surprise bit of casting Zach Galifianakis has signed on for his first period film, the 17th-century set Tulip Fever.  Directed by Justin Chadwick (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), the adaptation of Deborah Moggach‘s novel centers on a couple attempting to raise money to run away together by gambling their fortune in Amsterdam’s booming tulip market.  Screen Daily doesn't have any details on Galifainakis' role, but the film also stars Alicia Vikander, Dane DeHaan, Jack O’Connell, Holliday Grainger, and Christoph Waltz.

Finally, Variety reports that Gerard Butler has signed on to star in the heist drama Den of Thieves.  The story centers on a bank heist crew that decides to rob the Los Angeles Federal Reserve "right under the nose of a rogue sheriff's deputy."  It's a bit of a confusing description; aren't all heists under someone's nose?  A non-clandestine heist is just a robbery.

Christian Gudegast will direct from a script he co-wrote with Paul Scheuring.  Gugegast also wrote the script for the Olympus Has Fallen sequel, London Has Fallen, which also stars Butler.

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