Stuff.
Eddie Redmayne (Savage Grace) will star in the upcoming HBO pilot The Miraculous Year, directed by Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and written by John Logan (The Aviator). The drama is described as: "A chronicle of a New York family as seen through the eyes of a charming yet self-destructive Broadway composer (Redmayne)." Joining him are Hope Davis, Frank Langella, Patti LuPone, Lee Pace, Linus Roache, as well as Start Sands in a supporting role. (EW) [imdb]
Michael Fassbender, Colin Firth and Ralph Fiennes sign on to Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the film adaptation of John le Carre's classic novel of Cold War espionage. Gary Oldman is already on board as George Smiley. Sadly, it looks like David Thewlis, who was reported to have also been in talks a while back, is no longer going to be in the film. As the main cast now stands, I would say that Firth and Fiennes are probably playing Jim Prideaux and Bill Haydon respectively, with Fassbender as the younger Guillam. The key female roles, Ann Smiley and Connie Sachs, have yet to be cast. (Slashfilm)
Nicholas Hoult (Skins, A Single Man) will play Beast and Caleb Landry Jones will play Banshee in Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class. They join James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Alice Eve. (Coming Soon) [imdb]
Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement) is developing a live-action version of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, The Little Mermaid (there's no singing lobsters in the original, just whumpage and unrewarded feminine sacrifice by the bucketload), based on a script by Abi Morgan (Brick). It occurs to me that a large fraction of Dean/Castiel slash fiction is like a happier riff on the Little Mermaid. (THR)