Julia Roberts, Alec Baldwin, Matt Bomer and Jim Parsons have joined Ryan Murphy’s (“American Horror Story,” Eat Pray Love, “Glee”) next film, an adaptation of Larry Kramer’s semi-autobiographical play The Normal Heart, says The Hollywood Reporter. The film is being produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company. The play is described as follows:

“The Normal Heart” is the explosive drama about our most terrifying and troubling medical crisis today: the AIDS epidemic. It tells the story of very private lives caught up in the heartrendering ordeal of suffering and doom – an ordeal that was largely ignored for reasons of politics and majority morality.”

Mark Ruffalo will play the lead character Ned Weeks. Roberts plays Emma Brookner, “a wheel-chair bound doctor who is one of the only doctors in New York talking the new disease seriously.” Baldwin will play Weeks’ brother, “a lawyer having a hard time dealing with his sibling’s sexuality.” Bomer’s character is Felix Turner, “a gay fashion journalist who becomes Week’s boyfriend and tragically contracts the disease,” while Parsons is reprising his Broadway version of “a Southerner who is a gay activist and part of a gay men’s health crisis group.”

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It was back in August when news broke that The Help director Tate Taylor was circling an adaptation of the 2002 novel Peace Like a River, about an 11-year-old asthmatic boy who goes on a cross-country search with his sister and father for his older brother who has been charged with murder, to be produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B. But Pitt’s been waiting longer than that to bring the story to the screen. Peace Like a River was the second project Pitt bought when he started Plan B in 2002. “The first one was The Departed. The second one was this one, and it’s just taken awhile for it to gestate and find the right guy to tell it,” Pitt told us at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday.

Any chance will be seeing Pitt take the director’s chair anytime soon? “Hell no. Not interested. Not my thing,” he said.

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Very few people get to produce movies. Even fewer get to produce films with filmmaker Terrence Malick, who has only made a handful of movies over the past forty years: Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World.
His latest, the acclaimed drama (and my pick for best film of 2011 so far) The Tree Of Life, arrived on the scene this past May and has now debuted on Blu-ray Disc and DVD from Fox Home Entertainment.

I was fortunate to recently talk on the phone with one of The Tree of Life’s producers, Dede Gardner, about the film, what it meant to her and what it was like to work with Malick.

Thank you for taking the time out to talk to TheHDRoom about The Tree of Life. I just have to start off by saying that I thought this film was the best movie I have seen in years.

Thank you! That is so nice of you to say.

What was it like working with Terrence Malick?

It was a total pleasure, just a pleasure. He’s enormously intelligent, personable, generous, funny and friendly. He’s really down to earth and lovely to spend time with and obviously, insanely gifted. Being a longtime fan of his work, working with him was an added thrill. His decision to live a private life has led people to think that he can’t be a normal guy, but nothing could be further from the truth.

You’re President of Plan B Entertainment (Brad Pitt’s production company). How did you become part of the project? Did it go through Plan B first or was it that Brad Pitt first got the role as the father and Plan B came on board after that?

No, Plan B had been involved with the production of The Tree of Life before the decision had been made to have Brad star in it. Brad and I were talking to Terry and Sarah Green (also a producer on the film) about another project. In the course of that dialogue, Terry started to talk about Tree of Life. It was very obvious that this project was incredibly important to him, was something he was very committed to get made and that it would be difficult to get made. At that point, we jumped on board and told him that we would help in any way we can. Much later on, the decision was made for Brad to be in the film.

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Steve McQueen‘s adaptation of Solomon Northup’s autobiography Twelve Years a Slave continues to put together a damn fine cast. Underrated actor Chiwetel Ejiofor signed on in August to play Northup, an educated and married black man living in 1853 New York. Northup was approached by two men about a job offer in Washington D.C., but when he showed up he was kidnapped and forced into slavery. A couple weeks ago, Michael Fassbender signed on to the project and now Screen Daily reports [and the The Playlist confirms] that Brad Pitt has joined the picture.

Pitt has been producing the project for several years through his Plan B shingle, however there are currently no details on his acting role. A successful marketing campaign for Shame should help raise McQueen’s profile and therefore the profile of Slave, but getting a major star like Pitt on board is a major asset when it comes to picking up financing. The movie should have no trouble finding buyers when it goes to the American Film Market next month. Hit the jump for a synopsis of a Northup’s autobiography.

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Michael Fassbender and Steve McQueen will be cementing their already strong actor-director partnership on McQueen’s next movie, “Twelve Years a Slave.”

Chiwetel Ejiofor (“Inside Man”) stars in the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who became enslaved, from a script by McQueen and John Ridley (“Red Tails”). Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment is producing the film, scheduled to start shooting in early 2012. The news of Fassbender’s casting was first reported in Variety.

The details of Fassbender’s “Twelve Years a Slave” role are being kept under wraps, but if the actor’s prior collaborations with McQueen are any indication, he’ll play a character with complex morals.

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Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment has come aboard to produce Ryan Murphy’s “The Normal Heart.”

Based on Larry Kramer’s semi-autobiographical play, pic centers on an activist’s attempts to raise HIV/AIDS awareness during the 1980s.

Murphy will direct and serve as producer; The “Glee” creator last directed “Eat Pray Love” in 2010.

“The Normal Heart” enjoyed a Broadway run this year, starring Ellen Barkin and Joe Mantello. Mark Ruffalo is attached to star in the bigscreen adaptation.

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The Help director Tate Taylor is currently in talks to adapt the Leif Enger novel, Peace Like A River, for the big screen.

After the financial success of The Help (which did well in its first week at the US box office), Dreamworks are keen to work with Taylor again, this time teaming up with Warner Bros and Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company.

David Brown and Kit Golden will produce, alongside Pitt.

Peace Like A River, set in 1962, is a tale narrated by Reuben, an asthmatic 11-year-old boy who lives with his oddball family in smalltown Minnesota.

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Brad Pitt and his Plan B banner are tackling the subject of slavery with an adaptation of Twelve Years a Slave, an autobiography written in 1853 by Solomon Northup, a free black man who became enslaved.

Steve McQueen, who co-wrote and directed the acclaimed 2008 drama Hunger, is directing the adaptation while Chiwetel Ejiofor, the British actor who has appeared in movies such as Salt and Inside Man, is attached to the part of Northup. McQueen co-wrote the script with John Ridley.

Northup was a married and educated free black man living in New York when two men approached him with a job offer in Washington. When he showed up in D.C., he was kidnapped and put in a slave pen, paving the way to his grueling life under numerous owners.

The book is studied for everything from its details of the slave markets that existed in D.C. to the type of food served to slaves.

Read more/discuss. Thanks Gabriella.

The cast for World War Z is bulking up by the day, and yet, I still can’t figure out exactly how director Marc Forster has decided to adapt Max Brooks’s giant novel into a workable film. According to Deadline Ed Harris and Matthew Fox are both in talks to join the film, though the roles aren’t specified; Forster is also bringing in French actress Julia Levy-Boeken, and of course her role isn’t specified either.

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Even though Brad Pitt has been attached to star since June 2006, World War Z, the adaptation of Max Brooks’s novel about “the zombie war,” has had a hell of a time getting made. As recently as this March Paramount was looking for a co-financier to help make the massive movie possible– budgeted at over $125 million, World War Z will mimic the book’s exhaustive account of the zombie apocalypse, and those giant battle scenes don’t come cheap.

Now that the film really is moving forward, with Pitt still set to star, the studio can afford to bring in some smaller names whose salaries won’t inflate the price tag. According to Variety, The Pacific star James Badge Dale will be playing a key role, as an American soldier “who tries to alert authorities that the zombie threat is real.” Pitt will be playing the lead character but who actually does the least in the book, the interviewer largely existing off the page, asking the questions that form the narrative of the book.

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Walden Media has partnered with Universal Pictures to bring the Lou Zamperini story to the screen after 55 years in development.
Walden announced its involvement Thursday. Universal originally began development of the Zamperini story in 1956 but wasn’t ever able to bring the pic to the big screen.

Project was dubbed “Iron Man” at that point, a nickname given Zamperini for withstanding torture during his internment by a vicious guard nicknamed “The Bird.” In 2003, Brad Pitt’s Plan B came on produce with Universal and Cage’s Saturn Films on “Lou Zamperini” and attached Antoine Fuqua to direct.

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Hollywood star Brad Pitt is expected back in Malta for the filming of the Paramount zombie blockbuster World War Z, with shooting starting next month for about three weeks.

Cinema industry sources said the American actor was likely to have his star-studded family in tow. He should be accompanied by the equally celebrated actress Angelina Jolie. Labelled the sexiest stars in film history and attracting major global media attention, the couple has six adopted and biological children.

Brad Pitt was last in Malta in 2003 for the filming of the ancient epic Troy in which he played the mightiest of the Greeks, Achilles. This time round, he is a United Nations worker and father of two girls in the big-budget movie he is also producing.

Read more/discuss. Thanks Guli.

Mireille Enos, the star of AMC’s new crime drama “The Killing,” is leaping into features, nabbing the role of Brad Pitt’s wife in “World War Z,” an adaptation of Max Brooks’ globe-spanning zombie novel.

Marc Forster (“Quantum of Solace”) is directing the big-budget Paramount movie. Shooting is scheduled to begin in June in London, Malta and other locales around the world.

The novel is set 10 years after a global zombie epidemic, and is an oral history told from many perspectives around the world. Pitt, who is also producing, will play a U.N. worker. Enos would play his wife, a mother of two girls.

Read more/discuss. Your admin is the biggest wimp in the world when it comes to horror/zombie flicks. Will she find the strength to watch this movie? Stay tuned.

While chatting up “World War Z” author Max Brooks at the booth for comic publisher Avatar Press, the writer confirmed to MTV News that the adaption of his novel about the zombie apocalypse is not only moving forward, but Brad Pitt is now officially attached to star in the film. Additionally, Brooks revealed that Paramount has optioned the movie rights to two more of his projects: “The Zombie Survival Guide” and “The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks” graphic novel.

Pitt’s production company Plan B Entertainment first secured the rights to “World War Z” back in 2007 after a bidding war with Leonardo DiCaprio’s company, Appian Way. The actor has long been rumored as a potential lead for the film, but Brooks received the call confirming Pitt’s attachment (and the other “Survival Guide” deals) while signing copies of the books at the Avatar booth tonight (Wednesday, July 21) during Preview Night at Comic-Con.

Read more/discuss. Thanks Gabriella.

Paramount Pictures’ World War Z keeps inching towards production with news that director of photography Robert Richardson is currently prepping the movie at Elstree Studios in London.

A few weeks ago, we reported that Paramount was seeking another financial backer to share the $125 million production cost. A week after that news hit, we reported that David Ellison and his Skydance Productions company were in talks to co-finance World War Z. It isn’t known if a deal was actually made between Skydance and Paramount, but with the director of photography already starting his prep work, it seems certain World War Z is moving in the right direction. That report indicated a June production start is being targeted by the filmmakers.

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