Screentalk: Wild about Boyd Holbrook

Boyd Holbrook

Boyd Holbrook will play the object of desire of Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen in Naomi Foner's Very Good Girls. Peter Sarsgaard and Demi Moore also star in the story of two best friends determined to lose their virginity. They fall in love with the same artist (Holbrook) in the film set to shoot in New York in June.

Trials of an Emperor

Peter Webber's English-language epic Emperor has been picked up by Shochiku to roll out in Japan. Set post-Second World War, during the US occupation of the country, the movie turns on whether or not Emperor Hirohito will be tried for war crimes. Tommy Lee Jones, Matthew Fox and Toshiyuki Nishida star.

To serve them all his days

Icon UK Group is backing Lee Daniels' The Butler, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey. Inspired by the life of Eugene Allen, a White House butler who served eight American presidents, Matthew McConaughey, John Cusack, Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding Jr, are also lined up to star in the upcoming shoot.

Portman's calling the shots

Natalie Portman is attached to saddle up for Jane Got a Gun, a Western written by Brian Duffield. The script centres on a woman whose outlaw husband returns home riddled with bullet wounds. When her husband's gang turns up to finish the job, she reaches out to an ex-lover to ask if he will help defend her farm.

Two sides to every story

James McAvoy will star opposite Jessica Chastain in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, billed as a double-feature project. An exploration of how a married couple in New York City deal with a life-altering experience, the plan is for two movies. One story will be told by the husband, the other by the wife.

Roth joins the Lynch mob

Film-maker Jennifer Lynch has tapped Tim Roth to star in A Fall from Grace, which is set to begin shooting this summer in the US. Roth is to play a homicide detective on the trail of a serial killer. Eric Wilkinson has written the screenplay and will produce the independent project.