Here’s today’s latest casting news:

• Denzel Washington (Man on Fire) is in early talks to star in Shovel Ready, a Warner Bros. adaptation of journalist Adam Sternbergh’s debut dystopian novel.
• Melissa Leo (The Fighter) has joined Mark Webber’s The Ever After, described as a “hard examination of a marriage.”  Rosario Dawson (Trance) is also in talks to join.
• Josh Duhamel (Transformers) will join Lucas Till in Strings, an ensemble drama directed by Daniel Duran.

Hit the jump for more on each film.

The cast of the long-in-development adaptation of the 1980s TV series The Equalizer is starting to come together.  Denzel Washington has been set for quite some time in the lead role of a former covert operations officer who dedicates his life to helping people in trouble.  The production has seen both Nicolas Winding Refn and Rupert Wyatt enter and exit the director’s chair over the past couple of months, but Washington’s Training Day helmer Antoine Fuqua is now firmly set to bring the film to fruition.  As they move towards a production start date later this year in anticipation of an April 11, 2014 release date, Fuqua has now cast his female lead, and it’s a bit of a surprising choice: Chloe Grace Moretz.

Hit the jump for more, including information on the Taxi Driver-esque character that Moretz will play and a continuation of the original character in book form. 

Universal has released the first trailer, poster, and a few new images for director Baltasar Kormakur‘s (Contraband) actioner 2 Guns.  The film is based on the graphic novel of the same name and stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as operatives from competing government bureaus who are disavowed and forced to go on the run together after a mission goes wrong.  I’m happy to see that the pic doesn’t take itself too seriously, as there’s a nice sense of humor blended in with the more action-geared aspects of the story.  Washington and Wahlberg have some very promising chemistry, and 2 Guns looks like it could be a nice breath of fresh air in a sea of gritty, dark, and unrelenting action films that populate the marketplace.  Also, Bill Paxton as the villain?  Yes please.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer, poster, and some new images.  The film also stars Paula Patton, James Marsden, and Edward James Olmos.  2 Guns opens August 2nd.

Airline pilots, for the most part, are like the mysterious man behind the curtain.  Passengers only get a glimpse of them when exiting the plane and hear their voices  once in a while over the intercom.  These guys have hundreds of lives in their hands and we just take it for granted that they are not drunk out of their minds.  Robert Zemeckis‘ Flight is about a very talented alcoholic pilot who averts a major disaster and winds up nosediving right into his dark inner-demons.  More on Paramount’s Flight Blu-ray after the jump.

As Sunday’s 85th Annual Academy Awards loom closer, we’ve using this week as an opportunity to take a look back at how the past year’s Oscar race has played out in a number of categories.  We first took a look at the ebbs and flows in the Best Supporting Actor category, and then we chronicled the road that lead us to the Best Supporting Actress nominees.  Today we’re examining the Best Actor race, which actually seemed to be all wrapped up months before the nominees were even announced.  Hit the jump to read on.

Denzel Washington‘s previous directing efforts, Antwone Fisher and The Great Debaters met with positive critical response even though they didn’t smash up the box office, which wasn’t really necessary since they’re both small, character-driven dramas.  It’s been six years since Washington got behind the camera, but it looks like he’s eyeing the director’s chair for an adaptation of August Wilson‘s play Fences.  In 2010, Washington co-starred in the Broadway revival alongside Viola Davis, and won the Best Actor Tony for his work.

Hit the jump for more.

We’ve got two new images for you today from the following films:

• 2 Guns – The first image from director Baltasar Kormákur’s actioner features stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as two undercover operatives from different branches who work together without knowing each other’s secret identities.  2 Guns opens August 16th.
• Riddick - A new image from David Twohy’s third installment in the trilogy starring Vin Diesel as the fan-favorite anti-hero.  Riddick debuts September 6th.

Hit the jump to see both new images.

The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards have been announced, and it’s quite a whirlwind of nominees.  As expected, Lincoln landed the most nominations with 12, followed with Ang Lee’s Life of Pi which nabbed 11.  The big story here, though, is the Best Director category.  Shockingly, only two (two!) of the DGA nominees for Best Director made the Oscar cut: Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.  The rest of the category was filled out by Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook, and Michael Haneke for Amour.  It was almost guaranteed that Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow would be landing nominations for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, respectively, but shockingly neither made the cut.  Apparently those films just directed themselves.  Based off today’s nominations, it now looks like it’s (surprisingly) down to Lincoln vs. Silver Linings Playbook for the big win.

Hit the jump to check out the list of nominees, and click here to check them against my predictions (somehow I predicted the Best Picture and Supporting Actor categories perfectly).  The 85th Academy Awards will take place on February 24th.

In December, we reported the exciting news that Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn was in talks to direct Denzel Washington in an adaptation of the 1980s crime series, The Equalizer.  The show centered on Robert McCall (originally played by Edward Woodward), a former covert operations officer who dedicated his life to helping people in trouble.  Washington will play McCall in the adaptation, although the movie will only share the conceit of the show.  Unfortunately, we’ve learned that while Sony was close to closing a deal with Refn, the deal fell apart at the last minute due to unknown reasons.

We’ve also learned that Sony remains hot on adapting The Equalizer, and is continuing to search for a new director to start shooting in May with Washington still attached to star.  If you want to get a better sense of the TV series, hit the jump to see the intro for The Equalizer.  Refn’s new film, Only God Forgives, opens on May 23rd.  The director is still attached to the remake of Logan’s Run and an adaptation of the graphic novel, Button Man.

At last, Oscar is upon us.  Back in November I shared a look at the early awards season race by way of our 2013 Oscar Preview articles, and now nearly two months later there’s still quite a bit up in the air.  This truly is one of the more exciting awards races in recent years, as 2012 is so stacked with quality that there are a surprising number of uncertainties this close to the Academy Awards ceremony.  Nevertheless, I am once again foolishly going to attempt to predict how the Oscar nominations will shake out when they’re announced tomorrow morning, January 10th.  Hit the jump to check out my predictions.

Quite the interesting director/star pairing looks to be in the works.  A remake of the 1980s crime series The Equalizer has been in development for the past few years, with Denzel Washington most recently signing on to star.  Last we heard, Sony was compiling a shortlist of directors for the project, and on that list was Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn.  The studio has finally made a decision on who will take the helm of the project, and it is indeed Mr. Refn.  Hit the jump for more details, including a release date for Refn’s next film Only God Forgives.

One of the many films opening next summer is director Baltasar Kormákur‘s (The Deep, Contraband) 2 Guns.  Based on the Boom! Studios Graphic Novels by Steven Grant, 2 Guns is an action flick that stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as operatives from competing government bureaus who are disavowed and forced to go on the run together after a mission goes wrong.  The film also stars Paula Patton, Bill Paxton, James Marsden, Fred Ward and Edward James Olmos.

Recently I sat down with Kormákur for an extended video interview and he gave me an update on the project.  He says he’s trying to get Clinton Shorter to do the score, he’s in the middle of editing (he’s turning in his director’s cut around Christmas) and the current cut is about 2 hours 10 minutes, trimmed down from 2 hours 25 minutes.  When I asked him to describe the film, he pitched it as a pulpy comic adaptation that’s “probably closer to 48 Hrs. than Bad Boys.“  He also told me his contract says 2 Guns will be R-rated, but he will only make it R if it makes the movie better.  He doesn’t mind cutting an F-word.  In addition, when I asked him to compare it to Contraband, he said 2 Guns relies less on big action, “hopefully there is more fun in the action than necessarily big explosions.”  Hit the jump for more.

The 2013 awards race is in full swing, and what better way to spend the Thanksgiving holiday then to take a closer look at how the categories are shaping up thus far?  Over the next few days we’re providing a bit of an overview of what the state of the race looks like at this point in time.  Yesterday we ran down the contenders for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, and today we’ll be taking a look at the fiercely competitive categories for Best Actor and Best Actress.  Hit the jump to read on.

I’ve seen two films that deal with alcoholism this year, and Robert Zemeckis‘ Flight is the weaker of the two.  Earlier this year, I saw Smashed, an honest, unflinching look at a woman struggling to get sober.  In all fairness, Flight isn’t about the quest to get sober, as much as it brushes up against interesting notions of control.  Unfortunately, these notions become overshadowed as the film boils down the protagonist’s weakness into obvious plot points, character motivations, and a sermonizing finish that undermines the promise of a more textured, thoughtful story.

Flight marks the first pairing of Academy Award winners Denzel Washington and director Robert Zemeckis, who returns to live-action dramatic storytelling after a decade of success on the forefront of directing and producing movies utilizing motion capture technology. The screenplay by John Gatins centers on Captain Whip Whitaker (Washington) who miraculously crash lands his plane after a mid-air catastrophe, saving nearly everyone on board, but then becomes the target of a follow-up investigation that raises troubling questions about what really happened. Flight also stars John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Melissa Leo, Kelly Reilly, and Bruce Greenwood.

At the film’s recent press day, Washington, Zemeckis, Gatins, Goodman, Leo, Reilly, and Greenwood discussed making the dramatic thriller, what drew them to the project, the attraction and challenges of portraying complex, morally ambiguous characters, setting up a pivotal scene that pays homage to Hitchcock, and writing a suspenseful script that invites the audience to ride along with virtually every character while deciding which one to root for. Greenwood also shared his own harrowing tale of a real-life air travel experience he will never forget, and Washington revealed his recurring dream about flying and reminisced about the 20^th anniversary of Malcolm X.