Here’s another casting roundup for you guys:

  • Ryan Reynolds has joined the all-star cast of Criminal for Iceman director Ariel Vromen.
  • Jennifer Connelly has signed onto director Phillip Noyce’s America Pastoral, an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel.
  • Steve ZahnKathryn HahnMissi Pyle and Frank Langella (and others) have joined Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic for writer/director Matt Ross.
  • Elijah Wood will co-star in The Last Witch Hunter with Vin Diesel, Rose Leslie and Michael Caine for director Breck Eisner.

Hit the jump for more on these casting stories.

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First up, Variety reports on Ryan Reynolds joining Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Oldman in Criminal.  The film "centers on a dead CIA operative’s memories, secrets and skills that are implanted into a prisoner to help him stop a diabolical plot."  To me this is one of those ideas that's half fresh and half stale, which is to say I find it execution dependent.  I hope they pull it off.

Next up we have Jennifer Connelly joining Ewan McGregor in American Pastoral.  This sort of smells like a movie designed for prestige breeding and not necessarily audiences. Here's the official synopsis of the John Romano-scripted film:

American Pastoral follows Seymour “Swede” Levov, a legendary high school athlete, who grows up to marry a former beauty queen and inherits his father’s business.  Swede’s seemingly perfect life shatters when his daughter rebels by becoming a revolutionary and commits a deadly act of political terrorism during the Vietnam War.

Next up is Captain Fantastic, who added a lot of performers to its roster today and seems like it's about ready to go.  Steve Zahn, Kathryn Hahn, Missi Pyle and Frank Langella are the aforementioned marquee players to come aboard.  But Erin Moriarty, George MacKay, Annalise Basso, Samantha Isler, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks and Charlie Shotwell were cast as well.

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Here's the official synopsis for Captain Fantastic:

Captain Fantastic centers on a passionate father (Viggo Mortensen), who is so devoted to teaching his six children how to live, be free, and survive in the world that he has moved them deep into the forests of the Pacific Northwest. He spends his days teaching them combat skills, training them like professional athletes, homeschooling them in a rigorous classical education, and introducing them to the beauty of the natural world.  However, when he is forced to leave their self-created paradise and confront the real world, he begins a journey that challenges his unorthodox parenting.

And finally Elijah Wood has joined up with the increasingly fun-sounding The Last Witch Hunter. In the film "an immortal witch hunter (Diesel) partners with his natural enemy, a female witch, to stop the covens of NYC from unleashing a plague on humanity."  The production gets underway later this month.

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