We’ve got some new casting news for you:

• Ophelia Lovibond (No Strings Attached) has just joined the upcoming Marvel superhero film Guardians of the Galaxy alongside cast members Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, and Dave Bautista.
• Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers) and Hayley Atwell (Captain America) joined director Paul Andrew Williams’s (Song for Marion) Close Enough, the upcoming romantic war drama about lovers in France during the height of the Spanish Civil War.
• James Caviezel (Person of Interest) and Michael Chiklis (The Shield) have just signed onto Sony Pictures’s inspirational high school football film When the Game Stands Tall, and they will star alongside Laura Dern and Alexander Ludwig.

Hit the jump for more information on each new casting bit.

Production is currently underway on Marvel’s Captain America sequel, and though initially it was thought that Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter—who played a major role in the first film—wouldn’t be appearing in The Winter Soldier, we subsequently learned that Atwell will indeed be popping up in the follow-up.  As The Winter Soldier takes place in the present, one assumes that Atwell will likely be relegated to flashback sequences or will be covered in old age makeup.  Either way, it doesn’t sound like Peggy Carter will be a major character in the film.

Atwell recently spoke a bit about Captain America and its sequel, revealing that Marvel has something planned for Comic-Con that will show “what Peggy’s really capable of.”  The actress also addressed the online campaign for her to star in the Tomb Raider reboot.  Hit the jump to see what she had to say.

Marvel has sent out a press release announcing that filming has begun on Joe and Anthony Russo‘s Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Few details about the film are known, but the press release provides a brief yet informative logline: “Captain America: The Winter Soldier will pick-up where Marvel’s The Avengers left off, as Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) struggles to embrace his role in the modern world and teams up with Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), aka Black Widow, to battle a powerful yet shadowy enemy in present-day Washington, D.C.”  That’s a lot of new information, including the large role for Black Widow, and the setting, although we know there will be flashbacks to World War II.  Also, for those who don’t know, the “shadowy enemy” is the eponymous Winter Soldier, a.k.a. Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan).  The press release also confirms our earlier report that Hayley Atwell will return to play Peggy Carter.

Hit the jump to check out the full press release along with the first image, and click here for recently released concept art.  The film also stars Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Georges St-Pierre, Frank Grillo, Toby Jones, Emily VanCamp, Maximiliano Hernández, Robert Redford, and Samuel L. Jackson.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens on April 4, 2014.

Last month, we reported that Hayley Atwell would not be reprising her role as Peggy Carter in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  In an interview with TimeOut, she said she wouldn’t be returning.  However, Steve interviewed her Captain America co-star Stanley Tucci earlier today for Jack the Giant Slayer, and it looks like her comments may have been a little misdirection or the script has changed since her interview.

Hit the jump for more.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens in 3D on April 4, 2014.

We’re happy to debut the first poster for the upcoming action thriller The Sweeney today.  Directed by Nick Love (Outlaw) and co-written by John Hodge (Trainspotting), the film stars Ray Winstone as Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Ben Drew as his partner George Carter.  The two are “old school crime fighters” who enforce the law in a modern underworld, and with a bank heist in progress and Regan’s old enemy making an appearance on the streets of London, the veteran cop will do whatever it takes to get the job done.   The pic also stars Homeland’s Damian Lewis and Captain America’s Hayley Atwell.  Hit the jump to check out the poster.  The Sweeney will be available in theaters and VOD on March 1st.

While we’re still awaiting casting news regarding the female lead for Marvel’s sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we now have some confirmation on who won’t be in the movie.  Hayley Atwell, who played the female lead opposite Chris Evans in The First Avenger, previously played coy when asked about her involvement in the follow-up.  We learned in The Avengers that Peggy Carter is still alive in the present day, and it’s assumed that we’ll be getting at least a few flashbacks to Cap’s 1940s days in the sequel The Winter Soldier, so it seemed feasible for her to make an appearance.  Alas, it appears that Atwell will not, in fact, be popping up in the follow-up.  Hit the jump for more.

The first images of Oukast member Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000) as Jimi Hendrix have surfaced online.  He’s playing the legendary guitarist in a biopic called All Is By My Side, which is currently filming in Dublin.  The actor certainly has the physical resemblance down, but we don’t yet know if his acting ability is up to snuff.  The film also stars Imogen Poots and Hayley Atwell, and the set photos here also include a brief shot of the latter.  John Ridley wrote the script and is directing the pic, which will utilize interviews with the musician and archival footage of Hendrix to anchor the film’s structure.

Hit the jump to check out the images.

Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger) is set to lead the romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About Life.  According to Variety, Gil Junger, who wrote 1999′s 10 Things I Hate About You, which was based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, will direct from his own script.  The new film will advance situations from the original film, which starred Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Strangely, Junger said that the inspiration for the sequel came from “coming across a man who had committed suicide at a scenic overlook.”  Keep in mind that this is a sequel to a high school comedy.

Hit the jump for more.

Last week we reported that J.J. Abrams’ 3D sequel to 2009’s Star Trek had cemented a May 2013 release date, and today word comes that Alice Eve (She’s Out of My League) has joined the cast. Variety reports that Eve has landed an unspecified role in the follow-up that’s believed to be new to the canon. The actress apparently beat out Teresa Palmer (I Am Number Four) and Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger) for the role. Abrams returns to the director’s seat with most of the original cast expected to return. Benicio Del Toro has been cast as the villain, though the nature of his role is shrouded in secrecy. Hit the jump for more, including the possibility of a second villain added into the fold.

We have some brief casting news to report this morning.  First up, David Morrissey (The Red Riding Trilogy) and Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger) are set to co-star The Return Of Captain Nemo, a $10 million 3D sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  Per Deadline, “Atwell will play Sara, while Morrissey plays her uncle, chief adviser to President Ulysses S. Grant, who frees Nemo (Downtown Abbey‘s Hugh Bonneville) from prison to try and discover what the mysterious ‘sea monsters’ are sinking ships up and down the Atlantic Coast.”  The production will set up in Romania and take the 300 route by shooting entirely on green screen in order to cut costs.  Atwell will reportedly leave the project if she gets offered the female lead in the Tom Cruise sci-fi action flick, Horizons.  Production on Nemo is set to begin January 16th.

Hit the jump for casting news on the upcoming James Bond flick, Skyfall.

Back in August, we reported that a number of actresses were in the running to star in one of two lead female roles opposite Tom Cruise in Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski’s sci-fi pic Horizons (the project has also been referred to as Oblivion, but every story seems to go back and forth on what the title is). Jessica Chastain eventually won the role, and since “shortlist” and “reading with” stories are all the rage, three actresses are now apparently poised to read for the other lead role with Cruise this weekend: Kate Beckinsale, Diane Kruger, and Captain America’s Hayley Atwell. Hit the jump for more.

Rising star Brit Marling eyed the female lead in One Shot earlier this month, but chose to star The Company You Keep instead.  That leaves a vacancy in a high profile action-thriller for another rising star to star opposite Tom Cruise.  THR reports Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger), Rosamund Pike (Barney’s Version), and Alexa Davalos (Clash of the Titans) are reading for the part with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie.  Pike and Atwell aren’t new to these kinds of lists.  And Pike will replace Davalos as Andromeda in the Clash of the Titans sequel, further implying homogeneity among young starlets.  Not to detract from the talent of these ladies.  I have not seen Davalos in anything, but I thought Atwell and Pike were great in the little I’ve seen of their work.

One Shot is based on the novel of the same name in Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher series.  Cruise plays “an ex-Army cop who gets sucked into the mystery surrounding the arrest of a sniper accused of killing five random people in a shooting.”  Paramount is planning on a fall shoot in Pittsburgh for a February 8, 2013 release.  Read the book synopsis after the break.

This week, I’m bringing you the “Top 5″ from the lucky 13th floor of a hotel located in beautiful San Diego. I mention that only because on any typical weekend I would be writing from the suffocating heat of the Midwest and it’s just nice to remind myself of how happy I am to be able to walk outside without instantly sweating from every pore. But I digress…

In this week’s “Top 5″ installment, we have more Comic-Con coverage than you can shake a stick at (Do people still use that idiom? More importantly, is it actually an idiom?), trailers for The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man, the return of our video blog/podcast For Your Consideration, and an exclusive video interview with Captain America: The First Avenger‘s lovely star, Hayley Atwell. Hit the jump for brief recaps and links to each.

With Captain America: The First Avenger arriving in theaters in a few days, I spent most of last weekend interviewing the cast and filmmakers.  As I said in the intro to my Chris Evans and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely interviews, I absolutely loved this movie and think everyone involved did an amazing job bringing Captain America to life.  Trust me, if you were nervous about Chris Evans as Cap, or that Marvel couldn’t make a period piece, you’re going to be blown away this weekend.  Also, while I thought the love story in Thor was nonexistent, the relationship between Evans and Hayley Atwell (she plays Peggy Carter) felt real and believable.  It was actually one of the best parts of the movie.

Anyhow, a few days ago I got to sit down with Atwell.  We discussed the intense internet casting reports before production began, the immensity of the film and how everyone was trying to get photos from set, the romance between her character and Captain America, deleted scenes, the costumes, doing stunts in high heels, how she prepared for the film, and potential sequels.  Hit the jump to watch.

With director Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger set to hit theaters next week, Paramount has released the EPK (electronic press kit) which includes 4 movie clips, a  Meet Captain America Featurette, and almost 9 minutes of behind the scenes footage from when they were making the movie (B-Roll).  If you’re trying to stay spoiler free, I’d advise you to avoid watching these videos.  But if you want to see as much footage as possible, hit the jump.  The behind the scenes footage is really cool.  Especially if you want to see what it was like on set.