Opening this weekend in limited release is director Gus Van Sant’s Promised Land.  The film stars Matt Damon and Frances McDormand as natural gas salesmen who try to prey on an economic town in decline only to have their mission complicated by the citizens they encounter and an environmentalist played by John Krasinski.  Damon and Krasinski wrote the screenplay, and the film deals heavily with the consequences of fracking.  The film also stars Rosemarie DeWitt, Hal Holbrook, Scoot McNairy, and Titus Welliver.  For more on Promised Land, here are seven clips and the trailer.

During the recent Los Angeles press day I got to speak with Damon.  He talked about what surprised him when researching fracking, how the issue is very divisive, how lucky he’s been as an actor, and more.  Damon also spoke about his reaction to seeing a rough cut of Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, confirms he’s doing George Clooney’s Monuments Men, and says he was happy to work with Terry Gilliam again on The Zero Theorem, but he only has a very small part.  Hit the jump to watch.

The first images from the set of director Terry Gilliam’s upcoming sci-fi film The Zero Theorem have surfaced, and they’re unsurprisingly a little out there.  The film stars Christoph Waltz as Qohen Leth, a computer hacker who searches for the meaning of life while being distracted by Management, a shadowy figure from an Orwellian corporation.  We recently learned that Matt Damon would be reteaming with Gilliam for a small role in the pic, and these first set photos give us a look at Damon’s fantastically flamboyant character.  The actor recently revealed that he ran into a bit of trouble when he had to shave his head for Elysium reshoots, but Gilliam decided to take advantage of the look and present Damon in a way he’s never been seen before.

Hit the jump to check out the images, which also include a glimpse of Waltz’s bald lead character.  The film also stars Tilda Swinton.

A few big names in today’s casting round-up:

• Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting) is set to re-team with The Brothers Grimm director, Terry Gilliam, for a small role in his upcoming film, The Zero Theorem.
• Kevin Kline (The Ice Storm) is set as the lead of Errol Flynn in Quinceañera directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s indie, The Last of Robin Hood.  Susan Sarandon (Thelma & Louise) will co-star.

Hit the jump for much more on both films. 

When we reported that Terry Gilliam’s new picture, The Zero Theorem, would star Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), we also got this heavy-sounding logline: Waltz will star as Qohen Leth, a computer hacker who searches for the meaning of life while being distracted by Management, a shadowy figure from an Orwellian corporation.  Gilliam himself said that the one-liner came across a bit dark and promises a lighter take that’s actually very funny.  He also commented on the presence of nudity in the film, people flying through space and getting sucked into black holes and the fact that the film has only four major roles.  Hit the jump for much more from Gilliam on The Zero Theorem.

With his long-in-development The Man Who Killed Don Quixote delayed yet again, director Terry Gilliam is lining up a different project to tackle as his follow-up to The Imaginarium of Doctor Panassus.  Deadline reports that Christoph Waltz is set to star in The Zero Theorem, which is slated as Gilliam’s next film.  The pic is characteristically odd, as Waltz will play a character named Qohen Leth who is an eccentric computer genius bent on discovering the purpose of existence, or lack therof, through a mysterious project.

The script by Pat Rushin takes place in “an Orwellian corporate world where ‘mancams’ serve as the eyes of a shadowy figure known only as Mangaement.”  Waltz’s character is distracted by a love interest pestering him with “virtual sex” propositions and the rebellious teenage son of Management.  As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Management is none too happy about Leth’s mysterious project.  Production is scheduled to get underway in Europe on October 22nd.