The Farrellys have been trying to get this thing off the ground for about ten years, hopping between Warner Bros. and Columbia before finally landing on MGM. Penn and Del Toro were always part of the dream cast, but Carrey is a late edition. Funny that the one confirmed comedian is the last, and most surprising, addition to the crew.

Variety remembers that Del Toro displayed 'comic chops' in that movie Snatch, but Guy Ritchie gangster zingers aren't exactly the same thing as heavily-orchestrated socko ballets of physical comedy. Nor are witty, homo-positive Oscar acceptance speeches. Let's hope their rehearsal process is long and fruitful.

Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan are teeming up as a mismatched duo in the wacky comedy A Couple of Cops. It's being directed-for-hire by flailing "indie" comedian Kevin Smith. [Variety] Meanwhile Leonardo DiCaprio is is starring in a sci-fi written and directed by Christopher Nolan. [Variety] And, yay for some of you!, Megan Fox continues to get movie roles. [Variety] Oh. Heh. Mickey Rourke will be starring in an S&M film. [Variety]

A biopic about failed car maker John Z. DeLorean is in the works. No word yet on whether or not the film will incorporate the happy accident that his automobiles can be fashioned into time machines. [Variety] Scott Rudin, perhaps still reeling from his Harvey Weinstein/The Reader flame-out, has gone and struck a deal with Weinstein's former company, Miramax. He'll be producing a Patrick Marber (Closer) adaptation of Zoe Heller's novel The Believers. This is the third outing together for Rudin and Marber. [Variety]

Oh hellll no. A movie version of the Ramona Quimby books? Starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Bridget Moynahan, and [shudder] John Corbett? Ugh. Well, Goodwin as Aunt Bea sounds fine. But Moynahan as Ramona's mom? Sigh. Really, the only acceptable screen version of Ramona stars Sarah Polley. [THR] The View rambler Sherri Shepherd has landed a Lifetime comedy pilot. Terrific. [THR]

Ben Silverman's former production hut Reveille has a new head of reality programming. Noah Oppenheim was a producer at the Today Show before he was brought on as a development VP. Currently, the company's, um, largest reality show is probably The Biggest Loser. [THR]

Genius director Alexander Payne is going a bit Charlie Kaufman-esque with a film called Downsizing, about a man (Paul Giamatti) who decides to shrink himself to preserve his health. Reese Witherspoon meets cute with him along the way, and Sascha Baron Cohen plays a strange, tiny foreigner. Sounds twee. And wee! [Variety]

Keira Knightley will be starring in a movie version of Kazuo Ishiguro's sci-fi chamber piece Never Let Me Go—a scary and ponderous book—to be directed by Mark Romanek, who did scary and ponderous before, to middling effect, with One Hour Photo. Knightley, in my estimation, is actually pretty decent casting. [EW]

Arrested Development smirker Jason Bateman has just signed on to the Jason Reitman comedy Up in the Air (based on snark-defender Walter Kirn's novel), about a man (George Clooney) who is obsessed with frequent flier miles. Sounds zany!!!!! [Variety]

Young Loren Dean, who had some coulda-been-big opportunities in the 90's movies like Mumford and Gattaca, never quite made it. Ah well. He'll be starring alongside the inexplicably-made-it Hillary Swank in her exoneration pic Betty Anne Waters, currently filming in Ann Arbor. Pack a sweater, Loren. [THR]

Stars of old and relatively new will be joining the basically useless Entourage next season. Jami Gertz, who commingled with your Jason Patric vampire sex fantasies in The Lost Boys (or maybe your Bill Paxton/tornado fantasies in Twister), will play the wife of Gary Cole's sadsack agent character. And the delightful Autumn Reeser from The OC will play a junior agent at Miller/Gold. Good news for them, bad news for us that there's to be another season of all that limp bro blustering. [THR]

Ah even more sorta-forgotten actors getting brief glimmers of hope only to have most of it dashed. Still, good for you Julie Bowen, Scott Wolf, Jonathan Silverman, and Sabrina's Aunt Zelda (and Kate's mom from Lost), Beth Broderick. You'll all be heroes for at least a week. [THR]

Following in that vein, Kim Raver (Lipstick Jungle) and Alyssa Milano (Gold Rush: A Real Life Alaskan Adventure) have also landed pilot roles. Raver in Shonda Rhimes' already-annoying TV news drama Inside the Box, Milano in an "Untitled Ricky Blitt comedy" about a telemarketer. [THR]

Jim Carrey will play the Devil who tempts die-hard Washington Senators fan Joe Boyd, who's sick of watching the Yankees win all the damn time, to sell him his soul in exchange for a victorious season. Carrey in that role makes sense. But Boyd, who magically becomes slugger Joe Hardy and helps the Senators win, will oddly, and sort of annoyingly, be played by noted rap video star Jake Gyllenhaal. His hip-hop career aside, Gyllenhaal's biggest brush with the musical was his disastrous (on purpose, I guess) "And I Am Telling You" warble when he hosted Saturday Night Live a while back. There's been nothing announced about the musical's most important part, the sexy vamp Lola (she gets what she wants) that the Devil uses to tempt Joe. May we suggest not Anne Hathaway. [Variety]

Will Ferrell and the always-hilarious Mark Wahlberg have been cast in The B Team, an action comedy directed by longtime Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay. The producers are working hard to nail down that title, as an adaptation of 80's wacka-wacka fest The A-Team is already in the works. [Variety]

In his continued efforts to one day assemble the world's absolute sexiest film cast, which could make the universe wink out of existence like a hard-bodied Large Hadron Collider, Woody Allen has nabbed Antonio Banderas to be in his next film, which already stars Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Slumdog Millionaire beauty Freida Pinto, and, um, Sir Anthony Hopkins. The film shoots in London and, every night, in the little smut movie house in Allen's head. [Variety]

The sometimes likable, other times irksome Seth Green has been cast in Robert Zemeckis' latest weirdo performance-capture movie, called Mars Needs Moms. He joins his Austin Powers mother Mindy Sterling, as well as Joan Cusack and Dan Fogler, the dude from Balls of Fury (and from the musical 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, for which he won a Tony). [THR]

In TV, Brittany Snow has been cast as a young Lily van der Woodsen in that new Gossip Girl spin-off. Funny, we thought Snow's movie career was burgeoning. Also in television: Respectable actors Denis O'Hare and David Morse have been cast in TV pilots, and Jessica Capshaw now has a gig as a lesbian love interest on Grey's Anatomy. [EW, THR, EW]

Ain't It Cool News broke the stunning casting revelation this afternoon, noting few details besides Schwarzenegger's commitment to a one-day shoot and that "it seems that the Gov and Sly's character Barney Ross have some history back when the Gov was shooting Conan the Barbarian!" (Harry Knowles's exclamation point, not ours.) Add this to our already-robust interest in seeing the film, along with the governor's inevitable Charlie Rose appearance thanking Stallone for inviting him back in front of the camera at a time when only his dogs trusted him.

• 
  AICN Exclusive: Arnold Schwarzeneggar [sic] joins the cast of 'THE EXPENDABLES'!
  [AICN]

The three stars reportedly filmed their appearances today, all of which are featured in a bootlegged Hollywood movie that the Dunder-Mifflin staff attempts to watch during the workday. Few other details are known beyond the high likelihood that ABC's counterattack will still probably win Feb. 1 on the sure-fire appeal of its 2008 hit Inbred Obstacle Course All-Stars: Breasts Edition. Expect guest-star firings by Ben Silverman just for the sake of it.

• Jessica Alba Comes to 'The Office'! [E!]

Jackson won't likely make the trip to Germany, however, where Cheung shall make her diva descent shortly for the role of Madame Mimieux, the French cinema proprietor who, according to the Playlist, "takes in the protagonist Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) when she is homeless and being sought by the Nazis." A man whose Asian-film fetish defers only to his taste for toes, Tarantino will work around the minor French/Chinese ethnicity-disconnect problem later just for the chance to work with Cheung — and potentially finish the movie someday after first and second choices Nastassja Kinski and Isabelle Huppert reportedly bowed out of the same role.

Meanwhile, Jackson's narration will come much later, a small part whose expository whimsy served as rich consolation yesterday from old pal Tarantino after the indignity of Jackson's attachment to... we can't even say it. That's what friends are for, we guess.

• Article Name [Source]

Let’s begin by noting that Troll, the 1986 low-budget comedy/horror flick, was named as one of the 50 Worst Movies Ever Made in a documentary film of the same name. Of course, the doc was made in 2004, so it’s quite possible I Know Who Killed Me might have bumped it off the list were it released beforehand. Moving on! Among the myriad reasons why the Rosemary’s Baby-meets-The Exorcist-meets-Chuckie caper was a horrendous hack job unworthy of its two sequels or any kind of remake whatsoever, is this bit of trivia: a young male character in the film is named Harry Potter Jr., and due to the presence of a young male character with the same name in JK Rowling’s bank-breaking series and films, original Troll writer/director John Carl Buechler is of the opinion that he invented “the original Harry Potter.”

So what joy awaits us should Ali nail the role? For those of you who haven’t weeped through a viewing of this Dark Crystal wannabe, Torak the Troll is a funny-looking little demon thing who possesses inhabitants of an apartment building, infusing them with the spirits of things like goblins and bugbears, trapping them in coffins and unleashing murderous bat monsters, his version of Judge Doom’s “Dip.” But the far-from-funny dialogue and moldy amateur filming led to its rep as an all-time worst of the worst. Little Ali, should she be lucky enough to play Torak’s beloved ex-wife Eunice, will be making her big screen debut as a witch whose heart belongs to one of the most despised and ignored horror villains in movie history. We can just hear Dina’s overly-tight jeans snapping in half as she high-kicks her way into an adrenaline rush higher than any Lindsay has ever experienced. Bravo.

• ALI LOHAN: TROLL'S NEW GIRL? [E!]

According to People, Connor went through the audition process just like every other nobody pounding the kid star pavement and, lo and behold, won the part of playing a young Will Smith in the film. We hate to play the cynical card here, but there is one giant elephant in that casting room. Seven Pounds also stars he of the firmest buttocks in the land, Woody Harrelson, and internet TV star Rosario Dawson. So how did Connor, a kid whose acting experience has thus far been limited to pretending he loves his kooky dad, nail the part? Something tells us Cruise's all-powerful wizardly ways as gifted to him by the late King Hubbard, may include the ability to whisper evil nothings in Will's ear, leading to an instantaneous confirmation that Connor is The One. Call it a conspiracy theory, but we're just pondering out loud (well, pondering silently at our laptops, but you catch our drift).

• CONNOR CRUISE IS MAKING HIS BIG SCREEN DEBUT [People]

• The 30 Most Ill-Conceived Movie Monsters [Cracked.com]

· He's Canadian, à la Priestley.
· He's created colloquialisms.
· Given the choice, he would prefer not to be farted on by fellow plane passengers.
· He thinks Facebook should be called Lamebook.

...And his agent is pulling the plug on his online diary as we speak.

Milligan is set to play Ethan, who, according to a recently leaked character breakdown, is a jock who falls out of favor with the cool kids and into the 90210 crowd, who are of course, way cooler in their own improbably unique way. Now all he needs is his Naomi Bennett, the super hot and rich ex whose bitchiness belies hidden depths. Might we suggest, to whichever lucky lady is cast, a dose of beano before the first table read?

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Dustin Milligan first in new '90210' [THR]

The Beek, who has capitalized on his teen stardom with a string of forgettable movies (Varsity Blues excluded, of course) and guest appearances designed to play against the "Dawson" type — a serial killer on Criminal Minds, a douchebag ad buyer on Ugly Betty — will play a love interest for Cobie Smulders' character's Canadian pop star alter-ego, Robin Sparkles. No details yet, but if Sparkles last appearance is any indication, he'll win her over with his skateboarding tricks, take her to the foodcourt with a robot chaperone and rock her body until Canada Day.

• Exclusive: James Van Der Beek Gets In on the Robin Sparkles Action [E!]

Not part of the open call in New York in October, Mr. Woolard had been under consideration since November, and was quietly being groomed by the film's director, George Tillman Jr., before being officially selected.

"We set up a boot camp for three months just for him," Mr. Tillman said from New York, where he is preparing to begin production with Robert Teitel, his partner in State Street Pictures.

With the sizable share of lip-syncing planned for Notorious, Tillman didn't even necessarily require a seasoned rapper to fill Biggie's shoes. More glaringly, Searchlight's marketing and publicity overlords, who could sell snow to Eskimos (alas, there aren't enough Eskimos in the Academy to secure a Best Picture win), have clearly outdone themselves by positioning Notorious as both the early favorite for Juno-esque quasi-underdog glory and cheaply trivializing a share of the audience whose appeal it will primarily court. "We want the movie to be an anthem for a generation," studio boss Peter Rice told NYT reporter Michael Cieply. Terrific, Pete, but keep it short — at least 100 members of that generation already want their three or four hours back.

• Film Skirts Loose Ends in Death of a Rapper [Source]

We've settled upon Stanley Tucci as Spitzer, who beyond bearing more than a passing physical resemblance to the Governor, is a formidable actor who will bring the necessary gravitas to the part of the crusading politician caught with his hand in the high-class call-girl cookie jar. And as the forgiving Silda, nothing less than Battlestar Galactica's President Mary McDonnell will do.

• In Which Eliot Spitzer Does Something He Shouldn't — With a Lady! [Gawker]