After starring in Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Ken Jeong will be reuniting with the director for his upcoming true crime drama, Pain and Gain.  You might be most familiar with Jeong from his role as Mr. Chow in The Hangover or as Señor Chang in NBC’s Community.  In Bay’s last film, he played a character named Jerry Wang. THR reports that Jeong will be keeping with the naming theme as he will be playing Johnny Wu; few other details are available for his character at the moment.  Pain and Gain, a long-gestating passion project for Bay, tells the story of the Sun Gym gang, a group of Miami bodybuilders whose extortion scheme went terribly awry.  Since the film just began shooting recently in Miami, we posted some new images of stars Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg. A dark comedy, Pain and Gain also stars Ed Harris, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shaloub, Rebel Wilson, and Bar Paly.  Look for it to hit screens sometime next year.

Word on director Michael Bay’s relatively low-budget passion project Pain and Gain is that Scott Rosenberg (Con-Air) has been brought on to punch-up the screenplay originally written by Stephen Markus and Christopher McFeely (both of Captain America: The First Avenger). Based on a true story, Pain and Gain follows the saga of a group of bodybuilders in Miami that engaged in an extortion scheme which wound up spiraling out of control to include kidnapping and torture. The writers compared the tone of their darkly-humored film as based on that of the Coen brothers’ film, Fargo. Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg are attached to star in the pic alongside Ed Harris, Rob Corddry, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shaloub and Bar Paly. The film will shoot on location in Miami later this month. Hit the jump for more on Rosenberg and Pain and Gain.

It must be tough being Michael Bay. He gets to play with life-sized Transformers, blow stuff up all day and hang out with Victoria’s Secret supermodels. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Bay has cast Israeli supermodel Bar Paly (The Ruins) in his upcoming project, Pain and Gain. The director’s passion project will also feature non-supermodel, Tony Shaloub (Monk). The film’s premise is taken from the true life tale of bodybuilders, played by Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson, who got caught up in an extortion scheme that goes south, turning to kidnapping and murder. The film also stars Anthony Mackie, Rob Corddry and Ed Harris. Hit the jump for more on Paly and Shaloub’s characters.