Some recent casting news to share, as follows:

• Michael Gambon (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2) will star as a married couple in Love Is Strange, the new film from director Ira Sachs (Keep the Lights On).
• Noomi Rapace (Prometheus) is confirmed to star alongside Tom Hardy in Animal Rescue,  an adaptation of a Dennis Lehane short story to be directed by Michael Roskam (Bullhead).

Hit the jump for more on each casting announcement.

First up out of Sundance 2013, Gambon and Molina will play a married couple in the New York-based relationship drama, Love Is Strange.  Here's a synopsis from the press release:

Gambon and Molina play Ben and George, a couple who after 28 years together, finally marry at a City Hall wedding in Manhattan. On return from their honeymoon, however, Ben gets fired from his job as a choir director for a Catholic high school. With not enough money to stay in their small apartment, the two are forced to move in, separately, with a nephew and his family in Brooklyn, and the two gay cops next door.

A multi-generational story of love and marriage, LOVE IS STRANGE depicts the delicate nature of any two people trying to build a long life together, and the possibility of love to grow deeper, and richer, with time.

The picture is expected to start shooting in New York this summer.  Gambon recently starred in the Dustin Hoffman-directed Quartet while Molina's performance in Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes is currently premiering at Sundance.

From Variety comes confirmation of Rapace joining Hardy in Animal Rescue.  Rapace was offered the role around the holidays and has just officially signed on.  The picture will move its shooting location to New York rather than the familiar Massachusetts backdrop of Lehane's other adaptations.  Animal Rescue pits Hardy as a criminal attempting to reform his ways when he gets caught up in a heist gone wrong and a murder, all resulting from a lost and contested pit bull.  Rapace will star as Nadia, a scarred woman who lives near where Hardy's character finds a wounded puppy.  Production is scheduled to start this spring.

Rapace and Hardy had previously considered working on the long-gestating adaptation of Child 44, but Animal Rescue will be their first collaboration.  Rapace can next be seen in Niels Arden Oplev's Dead Man Down opposite Colin Farrell and then in Brian de Palma's Passion opposite Rachel McAdams.