Check out the latest casting news from the following films:

• Taylor Kitsch (John Carter) will join The Normal Heart, Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play that stars Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer and Jim Parsons, and will debut on HBO.
• Zach Gilford (The Last Stand) will star opposite Allison Miller (17 Again) in Devil’s Due, the Twentieth Century Fox thriller with found footage elements.
• Abigail Spencer (Cowboys & Aliens) has joined Beautiful Now, an indie drama from writer/director Daniela Amavia that centers on a passionate dancer who asks herself if she likes what she sees when her life flashes before her eyes.

Hit the jump for more on each casting announcement.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had an update regarding Glee and American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy’s feature film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning play The Normal Heart, but some firm news has surfaced today.  The autobiographical drama written by Larry Kramer, who also wrote the feature script, chronicles the rise of HIV/AIDS among New York’s gay community in the 1980s and features an impressive cast lead by Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo, and Matt Bomer.

HBO announced today that the film will debut as an HBO movie, with production set to get underway later this year for a 2014 debut.  Alec Baldwin and Jim Parsons were previously attached to the project, but they don’t appear in this latest press release.  This isn’t Murphy’s first foray into features, as he previously helmed Eat Pray Love and Running With Scissors.  Murphy follows in the footsteps of Steven Soderbergh, who opted to debut his upcoming Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, on HBO rather than going the theatrical route.  Hit the jump for the full press release.

Ryan Murphy is having a very good year. His smash-hit Fox series Glee is currently enjoying its third season, his horror anthology series American Horror Story broke ratings records on FX, and just yesterday we reported an impressive cast featuring Mark Ruffalo, Julia Roberts, and Alec Baldwin will star in his next feature directorial effort The Normal Heart. Now, Variety reports that Murphy is set to pen an untitled sci-fi/horror project for Sony Pictures with Apollo 18 scribe Brian Miller.

Absolutely no details regarding the project are given beyond the fact that it’s a sci-fi/horror movie, and it’s not clear if Murphy will also direct.  Apollo 18 didn’t exactly break box office records, and critical reception was lackluster, so this isn’t exactly the most exciting news ever. Murphy has a knack for coming up with fantastic concepts, but his execution is incredibly hit-or-miss. That said, hopefully we’re in for at least a cool concept. Production on The Normal Heart is set to begin this summer, and Variety’s report notes that Murphy’s eyeing Viggo Mortensen for a role in the pic, which is based on the Tony Award-winning play of the same name.

The creator of Glee, Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story has a feature film project in the works and is stocking it with an all-star cast. Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Tony Award-winning play, The Normal Heart, can now count Julia Roberts and Alec Baldwin among its stars that will join Mark Ruffalo. The autobiographical drama written by Larry Kramer, who also wrote the feature script, chronicles the rise of HIV/AIDS among New York’s gay community in the 1980s. Roberts will play wheel-chair bound doctor, Emma Brookner, who is one of the city’s few physicians who acknowledges the severity of the disease. Baldwin will play the brother to Ruffalo’s Ned Weeks. Matt Bomer (White Collar) and Jim Parsons (Big Bang Theory) are also joining the cast. Hit the jump for more on The Normal Heart.

While on the circuit for his new movie The Kids Are All Right, Mark Ruffalo mentioned that he will star in an adaptation of the Larry Kramer play The Normal Heart as Ned Weeks.  Glee creator Ryan Murphy is somehow involved in development, though it’s unknown at this point whether he’s a producer, director or something else entirely.  Kramer is scripting the adaptation, which is set during the AIDS outbreak in New York.  Hit the jump for a video of Ruffalo’s comments and a synopsis of the play.