Following the success of Avatar’s sky-hued Na’vi, Hollywood is seeing blue. Smurf blue, that is. It was announced this week by Deadline.com that How I Met Your Mother star Neil Patrick Harris will play the lead live-action part in the film that mixes real actors and animated ones. Although Harris won’t actually be blue himself, other actors have signed on to lend their voices to play animated characters in the Raja Gosnell-directed film. Comic veteran Jonathan Winters is set to play Papa Smurf while Katy Perry is in talks to play Smurfette. According to Variety, Alan Cumming is taking on Gutsy Smurf and George Lopez is onboard as Grouchy Smurf.
Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester is a busy B. these days. She has already signed on to the Hugh Laurie-starring indie drama Oranges and is now said to be in talks for a role in Monte Carlo opposite Disney Channel star Selena Gomez. Nicole Kidman is producing the film about a group of American women who ditch a disappointing no-frills holiday in Paris and pose as wealthy women vacationing in Monaco. Meanwhile, the Oranges cast is rounding out with Adam Brody, Alia Shawkat, Catherine Keener and Allison Janney all in negotiations to sign on for the dramedy about the relationship between an older man (Laurie) and the daughter (Meester) of one of his friends. This will be familiar terrain for the pair as Meester played an obsessed fan of Laurie’s misanthropic doctor in an early episode of “House.”
Rachel McAdams will reteam with her Wedding Crashers paramour Owen Wilson for Woody Allen’s untitled project which is set to shoot this summer in Paris. Also joining the cast, which includes the first lady of France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is the first lady of current French cinema, Marion Cotillard who won an Oscar a few years back for her turn as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. In another pairing of former lovers – although this time real-life former lovers – Justin Timberlake will join his ex-girlfriend in Bad Teacher. In the film, Cameron Diaz plays a middle-school teacher who vies with a rival who is dating a substitute teacher who will be played by Timberlake. Talk about strange bedfellows…
