Jenkins joins 'Eat, Pray, Love;' 'Get Him to the Greek' announces additional cast

By Sarah Sluis

Today's trades announced several new casting choices, as upcoming films pair up their leads.
Eat, Pray, Love, the book club favorite being made into a film starring one of America's favorite actresses, Julia Roberts, has made an additional casting decision: Richard Jenkins, who wowed audiences in The Visitor (a film which also used global encounters to foster the character's personal growth), will play a Texan Roberts meets on her worldwide journey to discover herself. The project was put in turnaround last year by Paramount before being picked up by Columbia. I'm not surprised that the project gave at least one studio cold feet. I tried to read the book but couldn't get through the first chapter. It's a book for the Nights in Rodanthe crowd--middle-aged women who find a story of a mid-life crisis appealing. That age group, according to marketing general wisdom, is the most sensitive to reviews, so unless the movie impresses critics and/or their friends, they won't see it.

Get Him to the Greek, an upcoming Judd Apatow project (releasing April 2010) about an intern (Jonah Hill) tasked with bringing a difficult rocker (Russell Brand) to L.A.'s Greek Theatre, has paired up its leads. "Mad Men's" Elisabeth Moss will play Hill's significant other, while Rose Byrne will play Brand's troubled starlet girlfriend. I can only hope she lampoons off-the-wall celebrities as well as Anna Faris did in Lost in Translation. Rounding out the cast, Sean "Puffy" Combs will play a record executive. From my understanding, Brand will play a version of the rehabbed rock star who dated Kristen Bell in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Bell announced today that she plans to star in You Again, where she will try to sabotage her brother's engagement to her high school archenemy.