A couple casting stories for you today. Orlando Bloom, Imogen Poots (28 Weeks Later) and Kerry Condon (The Last Station) have joined the cast of writer/director William Nunez’s feature film debut The Laureate. The film tracks the open love triangle between war poet Robert Graves (Bloom), his artist wife Nancy Nicholson (Condon) and American poet Laura Riding (Poots). Screen Daily (via The Playlist) reports that Bloom will topline the film for Media 8, which plans to look for financiers at the European Film Market next month.Hit the jump for news on Dane DeHaan joining Shia LaBeuof, Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain in John Hillcoat’s The Wettest County in the World.the_wettest_county_in_the_world_book_coverNewcomer Dane DeHaan (HBO’s In Treatment, True Blood) is the latest actor to join director John Hillcoat’s (The Road) adaptation of Matt Bondourant’s period thriller The Wettest County in the World. The screenplay from Nick Cave (The Proposition) centers on “a family of Prohibition-era bootleggers, and crimes committed by and against them.” We previously told you that Shia Labeouf and Tom Hardy had joined the cast as the middle and youngest brother, respectively, with Labeouf’s role being the lead in the film. Rising star Jessica Chastain (Terrence Malick’s upcoming Tree of Life) also stars in the film as Hardy’s love interest.Up and Comers reports (via The Playlist) that DeHaan will play teenage bootlegger Cricket, who is crippled by rickets and is Labeouf’s partner-in-crime. Production is set to get underway on the film next month. Here’s a synopsis of Matt Bondourant’s novel:

Based on the true story of Matt Bondurant's grandfather and two granduncles, The Wettest County in the World is a gripping tale of brotherhood, greed, and murder. The Bondurant Boys were a notorious gang of roughnecks and moonshiners who ran liquor through Franklin County, Virginia, during Prohibition and in the years after. Forrest, the eldest brother, is fierce, mythically indestructible, and the consummate businessman; Howard, the middle brother, is an ox of a man besieged by the horrors he witnessed in the Great War; and Jack, the youngest, has a taste for luxury and a dream to get out of Franklin. Driven and haunted, these men forge a business, fall in love, and struggle to stay afloat as they watch their family die, their father's business fail, and the world they know crumble beneath the Depression and drought.

White mule, white lightning, firewater, popskull, wild cat, stump whiskey, or rotgut -- whatever you called it, Franklin County was awash in moonshine in the 1920s. When Sherwood Anderson, the journalist and author of Winesburg, Ohio, was covering a story there, he christened it the "wettest county in the world." In the twilight of his career, Anderson finds himself driving along dusty red roads trying to find the Bondurant brothers, piece together the clues linking them to "The Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy," and break open the silence that shrouds Franklin County. [Amazon]