From the casting news universe come these two tidbits today:

• Lake Bell (No Strings Attached) has signed on to star alongside Jon Hamm and Aasif Mandvi in the Disney sports drama Million Dollar Arm.

• Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) and Phoebe Fox (One Day, Black Mirror) will star in The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, the sequel to 2012’s Daniel Radcliffe-led horror flick The Woman in Black.

Hit the jump for more on each project. 

Here is today’s casting news:

• Cole Hauser (Olympus Has Fallen) joins the already star-studded cast of executive producer Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller Transcendence.

• Rosario Dawson (Trance) is in final negotiations to play the leading role opposite Chris Rock in his latest comedy.

• Aasif Mandvi (The Daily Show) lands role in Disney’s Million Dollar Arm.

• Christine Lahti (Hawaii Five-0) is set to star alongside Katie Holmes in indie flick Mania Days.

Hit the jump for more details on each project.

Check out the latest casting news below:

• John Cusack (High Fidelity) is reportedly in talks to play The Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson in the indie Love & Mercy.
• Clifton Collins Jr. (Sunshine Cleaning) is the latest addition to Wally Pfister’s directorial debut Transcendence, starring Johnny Depp.
• Suraj Sharma (Life of Pi) will star in Disney’s true-life sports drama Million Dollar Arm, starring Jon Hamm.

Hit the jump for more on each casting announcement.

Director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) is in negotiations to helm Million Dollar Arm, a sports drama for Disney that is based on real life events. Starring Jon Hamm (Mad Men) as sports agent J.B. Bernstein.  Million Dollar Arm tells the story of how two Indian cricket players, Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh became finalists Bernstein’s titular reality show and landed Major League contracts.  Bernstein, burnt out from too many high-stress dealings with top-level talent, watched a cricket game on TV late one night and decided that the pitching motion was similar enough to baseball that there might just be a potential for some cross over.  Where could a stunt like this possibly work? Why, with the Pittsburgh Pirates, of course! Hit the jump for more.

Mad Men’s Jon Hamm is going from the board room to the baseball diamond in Disney’s Million Dollar Arm.  Hamm won’t be on the mound himself, but rather the man behind the talent, playing sports agent J.B. Bernstein.  Million Dollar Arm tells the story of how two Indian cricket players, Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh became finalists Bernstein’s titular reality show and landed Major League contracts.  Bernstein, burnt out from too many high-stress dealings with top-level talent, watched a cricket game on TV late one night and decided that the pitching motion was similar enough to baseball that there might just be a potential for some cross over.  Where could a stunt like this possibly work? Why, with the Pittsburgh Pirates, of course!  Hit the jump for more on Million Dollar Arm, a dramatization of this unlikely, but true, story.

Actor/writer/director Tom McCarthy has written and directed three great movies with The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win (he also worked on the story for Pixar’s Up).  Now Disney is hiring him to pen the sports drama Million Dollar Arm.  According to THR, the story is “based on the inspirational story of how sports agent J.B. Bernstein discovered professional pitchers Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel through his Indian reality show.”

Hit the jump to learn about Singh and Patel’s story and why I think McCarthy could do wonders with it.  I’ve also included video of an ESPN Outside the Lines piece on Singh and Patel.