We’ve got some brief casting news for you this afternoon.  First up, Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Glover, Danny Masterson, and Jon Heder will star in the dark indie comedy Killing Winston Jones.  Per Variety, the plot “centers on a sixth-grade English teacher (Masterson) who’s on a mission to get the newly constructed junior high gymnasium named after his father (Dreyfuss) despite the fact that the person so memorialized must be dead — leading to a bitter contest over the naming rights with his old rival (Glover).”  Joel David Moore, who co-starred in Avatar and previously co-directed the 2007 feature Spiral, will helm Killing Winston Jones.  The production company, RadioactiveGiant, “is planning to release the movie theatrically and across multiple platforms worldwide,” so we can probably expect a VOD release coupled with a limited theatrical release.

Hit the jump for casting news on the psychological thriller, Kristy.

The cast for Randall Miller’s indie pic CBGB is heating up with the addition of Ashley Greene (Twilight) in the lead role.  Named after the iconic New York club where punk music earned a good part of its history, CBGB already stars Malin Akerman, Rupert Grint, Johnny Galecki, Joel David Moore, Stana Katic and more.  Greene is in talks to star as Lisa Kristal, the daughter of club owner, Hilly Kristal, who will be played by Alan Rickman. The script was co-written by Miller and Jody Savin (the duo previously wrote Bottle Shock). CBGB plans to shoot later this month in Savannah, Georgia before moving production to New York.  Hit the jump for more details on Greene’s character and on CBGB.

Some easy on the eyes casting additions today.  Here they are at a glance:

• Malin Akerman (Watchmen) will star as “Blondie” front-woman, Debbie Harry in director Randall Miller’s indie, CBGB.
• Emily Browning (Sucker Punch) is in talks to join Plush, a psychic story from director Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight).
• Ahna O’Reilly (The Help) will star opposite Ashton Kutcher in the Steve Jobs indie picture, Jobs, from director Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote).

Hit the jump for more on each film.

We’ve got some new posters for you today with all sorts of genre confusion.  Here are the movies in brief:

• The Possession, a horror-thriller from director Ole Bornedal that stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick and Natasha Calis.  The film opens August 31st.
• Trishna, from director Michael Winterbottom, stars Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed in an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles.”
• Grassroots, a policitcal comedy/drama from director Stephen Gyllenhaal, stars Cobie Smulders, Jason Biggs and Joel David Moore.

Hit the jump to check out the new posters.

There are a number of things to recommend about Shark Night, which is unfortunate. Had there been a little more care in the first act, had there been nudity and had the majority of the shark effects been practical, they might have had an engagingly stupid B movie on their hands. Alas, the film comes close, but there is no cigar. Sara Paxton, Donal Logue, Joel David Moore and a bunch of random teenagers star in Shark Night, and our review of the Blu-ray follows after the jump.

We’ve got a couple of casting stories for you this afternoon. First up, Ray Winstone has been cast as the seventh and final dwarf in Snow White and the Huntsman. Heat Vision reports that Winstone joins previously announces dwarfs Ian McShane, Eddie Izzard, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan and Steven Graham. Winstone will play Trajan. Directed by Rupert Sanders, the film centers on princess Snow White (Kristen Stewart) attempting to escape the grasp of her evil stepmother (Charlize Theron) with the help of a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) who trains her to survive. Snow White and the Huntsman hits theaters June 1^st, 2012.

Additionally, Joel David Moore has joined the burgeoning cast of Oliver Stone’s Savages. Based on the book by Don Winslow, the film stars Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Emile Hirsch, John Travolta and Uma Thurman. The story centers on two Laguna Beach marijuana kingpins (Kitsch and Johnson) who encounter a world of trouble when their shared girlfriend (Lively) is kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel. Risky Business reports that Moore will play a computer geek who moves from a think tank in Washington to the marijuana business. Savages hits theaters on September 28^th, 2012. Hit the jump for the casting news of Katie Cassidy in Freaky Deaky.

The first trailer for Shark Night 3D has gone online.  It looks just as cheesy as you’d expect and it looks ultra-faithful to horror movie tropes in that the black guy clearly dies first.  Now the issue with a movie about sharks attacking hapless teens at a lake house is that the obvious solution is to simply not go back in the water after the first shark attack.  But it looks like the teens are being forced back in the lake (that’s right, someone transplanted sharks into a lake) as a Hostel-like torture game.  And now that we’ve sent torture porn underwater, hopefully we can shoot it into space.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  Shark Night 3D opens September 2nd.

Relativity Media has just obtained the rights to child-actor turned stuntman turned director David R. Ellis’ new untitled 3D shark thriller. THR is reporting that Relativity Media is planning a wide release for the shark thriller which should hit theaters sometime next year. The movie, which is being produced by Sierra Pictures and Incentive Filmed Entertainment, has a large cast including Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Katharine McPhee, Chris Carmack, Alyssa Diaz, Joel David Moore, Donal Logue, Sinqua Walls and Chris Zylka. The plot has seven college friends spending the weekend at a lake house on the Louisiana gulf where they find out that theres much more than shrimp in these waters.

The screenplay was penned by first timer film writers Jesse Studenberg and Will Hayes and is being produced by Chris Briggs and Mike Fleiss under their NextFilms banner and Lynette Howell of Silverwood Films. Ellis’ previous films include the underwhelming The Final Destination and Cellular. The film is already in post production so expect an official release date soon.

Back in May, we reported that director David R. Ellis (Snakes on a Plane) had come on board to direct Shark Night 3D, even though a few days earlier he signed on to helm The Genesis Code with Hayden Christensen set to star.  It now looks like Shark Night 3D will indeed be Ellis’ next project with Sinqua Walls, Chris Carmack, Alyssa Diaz and Joel David Moore all signing on to star in the film. Hit the jump to find out the which roles each actor will play along with more details on the film.

We have three pieces of casting news for you this morning.  First up, Channing Tatum has signed on to star in 20th Century Fox’ “sci-fi-romantic-epic” Ion.  According to Heat Vision, “The plot revolves around a man who travels to different Earths and dimensions in order to find his reincarnated lover.”  Of course, the movie is being compared to Avatar because it like involves space and love and it’s really long and stuff.  I will say that the concept sounds pretty cool and I have to give Avatar some credit for pushing studios to consider making movies that aren’t based off an existing property.

Hit the jump for news about Lukas Haas joining Red Riding Hood and Jason Biggs and Joel David Moore signing on for Grassroots.

Recently James Cameron went to Brazil as a guest speaker at the 1º  Internacional Forum of Environmental Sustainability at Manaus, capital of the Brazilian state of Amazon – where most of the Brazilian rainforest is located.  The positive experience motivated Cameron to do a second visit to the country. He asked Fox to do a press conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil´s largest city, to release Avatar in DVD and Blu-ray.

Travelling with the producer Jon Landau, the actress Sigourney Weaver (Dr. Grace Augustine) and the actor Joel David Moore (Norm Spellman), Cameron arrived last Saturday. After planting a tree in a local park, a symbolic gesture that started a Fox campaign – the company will plant 1 million trees around the world until the end of the year – he sat down with the local press. After the jump are some highlights from the press conference.  He talked about Avatar 2, the Avatar Blu-ray, and more.

20th Century Fox has finally announced James Cameron’s Avatar will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 22 – which is the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day.  While we all know we’ll eventually get a spectacular special edition of the highest grossing movie of all time, this first edition will be extremely bare bones.  And when I say bare bones…I mean literally nothing but the movie.  So if you need to own Avatar as soon as it’s available, this edition will suffice.  But I’d wait till the end of the year when Fox will release a great special edition.  Hit the jump for the press release and the Blu-ray cover art.

A few new high quality images from James Cameron’s “Avatar” have hit the net and I have to say…they look great. While I was one of the people less than impressed with the 2D trailer, every single person I have spoken with who has seen the 3D footage tells me it’s amazing and I should only see it in that format. And believe me…I will. After all, James Cameron spent years perfecting the technology to make “Avatar”, and I only want to see the film in a theater that can display his vision properly. Anyway, check out these images. They’re really great.