A favorite child actress from the early 1990s is returning to the screen in an exciting new project. Also today: two book-to-movie fantasy pictures have found their able directors, some big Hunger Games casting is announced, and Winona Ryder gets her own Black Swan.

  • HBO has announced that they've picked up Veep, created by political comedy guru Armando Iannucci and starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, to series. Yay that is exciting! You know what's most exciting about this? The return of Anna Chlumsky! Remember Anna Chlumsky? Veda Sultenfuss? You remember Veda Sultenfuss. She writes poetry about ice cream and has a friend who died from bees. (Childhood spoiler alert.) Chlumsky has done a few things since My Girl, things like the Cannes favorite Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain (not to be confused with the gay geri-porn title Old Diggers: The Secretion of Bears Mounting) and Iannucci's own In the Loop, but this is a real regular gig, on a big HBO show no less! She'll play Louis-Dreyfus's vice president character's chief of staff. Thomas J. would be so proud. [EW]
  • Director Craig Gillespie has been tapped to helm the movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which David O. Russell was once attached to. Gillespie directed the indie Lars and the Real Girl, so expect the zombies to do a lot of weird, quirky things for no reason other than to be weird and quirky. [Deadline] In other fantasy trend book related movie news, Matt Reeves, director of Cloverfield and Let Me In, has been hired to direct the movie adaptation of Justin Cronin's post-apocalyptic vampire novel The Passage. Set your cameras to shaky! [Deadline]
  • Hunger Games news! Hunger Games news! Two more tributes have been cast in the movie, the critical roles of the girl and boy tributes from District 11. Never-heard-of-'ems Dayo Okeniyi and Amandla Stenberg are playing Thresh and Rue, respectively. I like that they went with randoms and hope they continue to do so as the casting process continues. Anyway, can't wait to see these two in the second movie! Oh wait. [EW]
  • This is not a terribly exciting item, but it's worth mentioning for one reason. A&E's reality show Storage Wars hit a ratings high last night, raking in 3.9 million viewers. Good for them! The reason you should care is because you need to watch this show. Have you seen that show? It is seriously fascinating. Watch a few episodes of it and then try to tell me that Barry is not one of the more compellingly funny characters currently on television. Seriously, watch a few episodes! You will never be able to stop. [THR]
  • Resurgent actress Winona Ryder has been cast alongside James Franco in the indie thriller The Stare, and here is the plot description: "a playwright (Ryder) finds her mind beginning to warp as she struggles to launch her next production. She's plagued by dreams and visions of being watched, but can't decide if she's at the center of a manipulative plot or simply losing her grip on reality." Sound familiar? Maybe Natalie Portman will make a sad boozy cameo as a bitter rival playwright. Here's hoping! It will also be funny when some Tisch grad starts going on 20/20 saying they, in fact, did the majority of the script writing scenes. [Deadline]

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