Exclusive: Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel Officially Cast in TOTAL RECALL; Filming Starts Monday in Toronto [UPDATED]

Last month we heard that Sony Pictures had offered Kate Beckinsale the role of Lori opposite Colin Farrell in their Total Recall remake.  With her husband, Len Wiseman, directing the project and given that they previously collaborated on the Underworld movies, it wasn’t really much of a surprise.  However, sources have now told us that she’s officially signed on and Jessica Biel is going to play the other female lead (Melina).  In addition to the casting news, we’ve been told filming starts Monday in Toronto.

For those playing catch up on the remake, Colin Farrell is set to star, Ethan Hawke has a cameo, and Bryan Cranston is poised to play the villain.  The remake will apparently be closer to Phillip K. Dick’s source material than the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger flick. Farrell plays a factory worker who begins to believe he’s a spy for either the nation stat Euromerica or New Shanghai, but he doesn’t know which.  Hit the jump for a recap of what we know about the film so far.

[Update: Heat Vision reports that Bill Nighy has joined the cast as the enigmatic Quatto, the leader of the resistance.]

Wiseman’s adaptation will definitely be different than the previous incarnation, as it also forgoes the trip to Mars that plays a major role in the 1990 film. Cranston plays Vilos Cohaagen, the leader of Euromerica who, under the cover of protecting his people, is secretly readying an invasion of New Shanghai.

When I spoke to producer Neal Moritz earlier this year, he talked about the world they’re creating for the remake:

“I think the world that Len Wiseman is creating is incredible. It’s a real world, a real future world, where the cities have just gotten so overcrowded that the cities are just built up, up, up, up. It’s just everything I see on the movie, every pre-vis I see on the movie, every conceptual drawing on this movie that I see just makes me more and more excited. We’re playing it like a real world, but there’s all these technological advancements to the real world, and it’s just really cool. It’s an awesome movie. I’m dying—as a fan of movies, more than anything, it’s a movie that I’m just dying to see.”

While I was a bit nervous about the remake as the original is one of my favorite Schwarzenegger movies, with the cast they’ve assembled, I’m starting to get excited.

Total Recall is scheduled for released on August 3^rd, 2012.  Click here for everything we’ve posted on the remake.