• Jena Malone (Hatfields & McCoys, Sucker Punch) is in talks to play the strong-willed tribute Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The character is described in the book as possessing “a wicked ability to murder,” winning her Hunger Games by pretending to be weak and then picking off the other tributes. The first time she appears in the book, she’s naked, and Entertainment Weekly wonders whether that scene will make it into the film.
• Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Clone Wars, Hotel Transylvania) is set to direct an animated version of Popeye. [via Variety]
• Peter Berg is blaming Battleship’s Stateside floppage on The Avengers: “The movie kicked butt internationally, but we kind of ran into a wall when Avengers refused to go away. The Avengers outperformed everything. It was impossible for Battleship to get any oxygen. I would have loved to have come out three weeks before The Avengers domestically, like we did internationally. What I need everyone to do is go see Battleship now that they’ve seen Avengers five times. If they do that, we can definitely make a sequel. Battleship is a film that I would definitely like to do a sequel to. I loved making that film. I had a great time with it.” [via MTV]
• True Blood’s Joe Manganiello (Alcide) is desperate to play a big screen superhero: “My schedule on True Blood has kept me from the big action movies. There’s been serious interest in me for big action pictures, and we can’t fit them into my hiatus from the series. I have a contract. I can’t walk away from it. And I wouldn’t want to. But for a kid who grew up loving action pictures and comic books, that move seems like a no-brainer. Since graduating from a classical theatre school, I’ve consciously tried to turn myself into the kind of adult actor who would make the sort of comic book superhero that I would have wanted to see when I was a kid. I hope that happens, someday. It’s just a matter of when it comes up and what it is.” So, who do you think he could play? [via Movie Nation]
• Vulture has revealed HBO’s solution to Game Of Thrones’ “decapitated George Bush” debacle – a digital makeover. Here’s what you’ll see if buy the new “censored” versions of the season one DVD/Blu-ray.
Tags: Avengers Assemble, Battleship, Game Of Throes, Popeye, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, True Blood
