Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow isn’t done with the action/war genre quite yet: she’s following up her Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker with a story about Navy SEAL Team 6′s killing of Osama bin Laden. She’s already locked down some fantastic actors in lead roles, and now Deadline reports that the Point Break director is on the hunt for a few more to round out her new cast.

While Jason Clarke (“The Chicago Code,” Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming The Great Gatsby), Chris Pratt (“Parks and Recreation,” Moneyball), and Joel Edgerton (Warrior, The Thing) have already been confirmed, there are some new names in the mix: Jessica Chastain, Edgar Ramirez, and Mark Strong are all in talks to join the film in unknown roles. Honestly? It doesn’t matter what roles they play – these are all fantastic actors that would be a great asset to any film. Chastain burst onto the scene in 2011, releasing seven films in one year (including the fantastic Michael Shannon paranoia flick Take Shelter, one of my favorites of the year). Mark Strong always elevates any material he’s in – yes, even Green Lantern – and Edgar Ramirez received rave reviews for his work on 2010′s Carlos after appearing in The Bourne Ultimatum.

Bigelow is re-teaming with Hurt Locker writer Mark Boal on the film (once called Kill Bin Laden but now officially untitled), which will hit theaters on December 19th, 2012.

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When breaking news hit in April that Osama Bin Laden was killed, there was no group that was happier than Americans. So what happens when there’s a pinnacle point of American history? A movie is made!

Going back a bit, The Hurt Locker gave a realistic look at the gritty horrors of war and became a critically acclaimed work of film, even earning the Oscar for Best Picture, so naturally the director, Kathryn Bigelow, would definitely be a front runner to direct the real life triumph for the United States military.

Well the confirmation that Bigelow would direct has been set in stone for a while now and even the title, Kill Bin Laden (They definitely went for a subtle approach) was announced a few months ago. With that being said, the cast is far from confirmed, with stars like Tom Hardy, Idris Elba, Joel Edgerton, and Guy Pierce still being rumored to join the film. In fact, the only confirmed actor is Jason Clarke (The Great Gatsby).

Now according to Twitch, the current actor in talks to join Bigelow’s Navy SEAL picture, is Chris Pratt. Pratt is probably mostly known for his role in the comedy television series Parks and Recreation, so to most, his addition to a serious war picture, revolving around a real life event no less, may seem odd. But Pratt has had some more dramatic roles, and his most recent one in this year’s Moneyball shows that he’s more than capable of human drama.

Bigelow, along with writer Mark Boal, are anticipating to get production started by February, with a December 2012 release date. This is definitely one of my more anticipated films, not really because of its subject matter but because of a return for Bigelow to the modern war genre, which honestly consisted of a few lackluster films until The Hurt Locker completely blew it out of the water.

With that being said, I’m glad Bigelow is still going for a lesser-known cast because last time she did that, it completely jump started Jeremy Renner’s career into what it is today. But honestly, I’d love to see the likes of Tom Hardy or Joel Edgerton join the cast to provide a sense of familiarity. We’ll just have to wait and see as more announcements start rolling in before the supposed February production start date. Until then, make sure to keep an eye out for this one!

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Earlier this year Tom Hanks was reportedly in discussions to join Triple Frontier, Kathryn Bigelow’s first post-Oscar movie following The Hurt Locker. The movie, which was also called Sleeping Dogs for a while, is set in the border zone between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, which is a haven for organized crime and centers on five men of various ages working in the zone.

Now producer Charles Roven has confirmed that Hanks will appear in the film, and they are now looking to cast the other roles.

From ComingSoon:

“Tom Hanks is starring in the film,” Roven said, “and we’re still looking to cast the other roles. We’re hoping to start shooting the movie sometime in mid-March.”

Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Sean Penn and Jeremy Renner have all been associated and mentioned for roles at some point, and if they all joined it would be a killer cast.

Hanks’ next role will see him act alongside Sandra Bullock in Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, and the actor is also attached to Cloud Atlas with Natalie Portman and Halle Berry. His next film, Larry Crowne (which he also co-wrote and directed), is set to open on July 1, 2011.

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Yesterday we heard Tom Hanks was in talks with Kathryn Bigelow to join her first post-Oscar movie Sleeping Dogs, and today Deadline is reporting Johnny Depp might be joining the film too.

The story is set in the border zone between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, which is a haven for organized crime and centers on five men of various ages working in the zone. Apparently only 2 of the men are the leads and actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Sean Penn and Jeremy Renner have previously been linked to the roles.

One problem for Depp could be schedule conflicts as he is preparing to start work in February on Dark Shadows for Warner Bros and Tim Burton, which is the same month Bigelow and Paramount aim to get started on Sleeping Dogs. Although “everyone will try over the next two weeks to make it possible for him to do both” according to Deadline so it may work out. If not i’m sure there will be another high profile actor waiting to jump on the Bigelow bandwagon.

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According to Deadline Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) is in talks with Tom Hanks for him to join her first post-Oscar movie Sleeping Dogs (previously known as Triple Frontier). The story is set in the border zone between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, which is a haven for organized crime and centers on five men of various ages working in the zone.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Sean Penn and Jeremy Renner have all been associated and mentioned for roles at some point, and if they all joined it would be a killer cast. THR say that no offers have been made yet as the script is still being worked on, but the aim is to begin filming early next year so we should be hearing confirmations before the end of the year.

Hanks’ next role will see him act alongside Sandra Bullock in Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, and the actor is also attached to Cloud Atlas with Natalie Portman and Halle Berry. Hanks certainly has a way with the ladies.

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Buried in an article by the L.A Times about what projects this years Oscar winners have lined up next is this nugget of info regarding directing gigs offered to Best Director winner Kathryn Bigelow:

Kathryn Bigelow, the veteran filmmaker who won Oscars on Sunday for best picture and best director, has also been cautious about signing on to a new film. The “Hurt Locker” director-producer has turned down a host of jobs on big-budget movies, including an offer to direct the relaunch of the “Spider-Man” franchise — the job wound up going to “(500) Days of Summer’s” Marc Webb.

Things like this always interest me. After directors and actors receive Oscar nominations there is a period of a few weeks between the announcement and the ceremony where they receive a ton of offers. Sony will have no doubt looked at a number of different directors after they decided they were rebooting the Spider-Man franchise, and I’m sure they had a glance at this year’s Best Director nominees for potential directors.

I can understand why Bigelow declined, although if she were to consider taking on a superhero movie I think she would be well suited to one in particular.

Wonder Woman.

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BEST PICTURE
Winner: The Hurt Locker
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

BEST DIRECTOR
Winner: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
James Cameron (Avatar)
Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
Lee Daniels (Precious)
Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)

BEST ACTOR
Winner: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
George Clooney (Up in the Air)
Colin Firth (A Single Man)
Morgan Freeman (Invictus)
Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

BEST ACTRESS
Winner: Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
Helen Mirren (The Last Station)
Carey Mulligan (An Education)
Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)
Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Winner: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Matt Damon (Invictus)
Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)
Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)
Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Winner: Mo’Nique (Precious)
Penelope Cruz (Nine)
Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)
Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)
Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Winner: El Secreto de Sus Ojos – The Secret of Their Eyes (Argentina)
Ajami (Israel)
The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)
Un Prophete – A Prophet (France)
The White Ribbon (Germany)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Winner: Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker)
Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
Alessandro Camon, Oren Moverman (The Messenger)
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (A Serious Man)
Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Tom McCarthy (Up)

BEST ANIMATION
Winner: Up
Coraline
Fantastic Mr Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Winner: Geoffrey Fletcher (Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire)
Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell (District 9)
Nick Hornby (An Education)
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche (In the Loop)
Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air)

BEST ART DIRECTION
Winner: Avatar
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
Sherlock Holmes
The Young Victoria

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Winner: Avatar
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
The White Ribbon

BEST SOUND MIXING
Winner: The Hurt Locker
Avatar
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

BEST SOUND EDITING
Winner: The Hurt Locker
Avatar
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Up

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
Winner: The Weary Kind (theme from Crazy Heart) from Crazy Heart by Ryan Bingham, T Bone Burnett
Almost There from The Princess and the Frog by Randy Newman
Down in New Orleans from The Princess and the Frog by Randy Newman
Loin de Paname from Paris 36 by Reinhardt Wagner, Frank Thomas
Take It All from Nine by Maury Yeston

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Winner: Up (Michael Giacchino)
Avatar (James Horner)
Fantastic Mr Fox (Alexandre Desplat)
The Hurt Locker (Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders)
Sherlock Holmes (Hans Zimmer)

BEST COSTUMES
Winner: The Young Victoria
Bright Star
Coco Before Chanel
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Winner: The Cove
Burma VJ
Food, Inc.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Winner: Music by Prudence
China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Rabbit a la Berlin

BEST FILM EDITING
Winner: The Hurt Locker
Avatar
District 9
Inglourious Basterds
Precious

BEST MAKE-UP
Winner: Star Trek
Il Divo
The Young Victoria

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
Winner: Logorama
French Roast
Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty
The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)
A Matter of Loaf and Death

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
Winner: The New Tenants
The Door
Instead of Abracadabra
Kavi
Miracle Fish

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Winner: Avatar
District 9
Star Trek

….and there we have it. The 2010 Oscars belonged to The Hurt Locker which picked up 6 Oscars, including an historic win for Kathryn Bigelow who is the first female to win the best director Oscar.

What did you think of the results? Should Avatar have picked up more technical awards? Should Sandra Bullock have won the Best Actress award? Sound off in the comments section below!

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I love it when The Hollywood Reporter make these roundtable videos. Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Jason Reitman, Lee Daniels and Kathryn Bigelow (Cameron’s ex-wife) all sat together and had a discussion about movies and the movie business. Watch below:

Are you an insider or an outsider?

What’s the toughest scene to film?

What would you do instead of directing?

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The Hurt Locker is a war movie, no doubt. But war movies come in many shapes and sizes, since the only criteria is that the movie be about war or be about a particular war. Good Morning Vietnam? Still a war movie. Lions for Lambs? War movie.

Movies about the Iraq War haven’t been doing so well at the box office in recent years. It might have been because the American Government was making their own policy horror film and facing that reality on our free time was not the movie-going public’s idea of entertainment. Or maybe those movies just didn’t know how to approach the subject matter.

When I know I’m strapping in for a war movie, there are some things I have come to expect:

1) War is confusing, so there will inevitably be a scene where key information about what’s happening is withheld from you.

2) The people who serve our country are heroes, so except a character with strong moral fiber.

3) There will probably be a character who wasn’t expecting the realism of life or death situations. This character will break down in a battle situation, adding tension because he’s obviously not doing his job.

4) There will be a “What does it all mean?” scene or discussion which usually ends with something like: “War Is Hell.”

The Hurt Locker doesn’t fail to meet these criteria, though some of the above four points are hit harder than others, but what makes it different from other war movies is that it’s primarily set in combat, and that it might be the best superhero movie to come out this year.

The Hurt Locker was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whose diverse career thus far includes vampires in Near Dark, surfers in Point Break, and the only movie poster I own but refuse to put up on my wall, the dismal submarine flick, K19: Widowmaker. She shot the movie on Super 16mm film, mostly handheld, in Jordan from a script by Iraq reporter Mark Boal. As a result, this film drops you into combat and keeps you there for the duration. The tension is immediately cranked up from the first scene where we learn that things explode and kill people.

This isn’t a movie about situations, this isn’t a movie about message, this is a movie about waking up every day knowing that things explode and kill people, and this is a fact. The uncertainty each day revolves around swimming against the tide, hoping that whatever happens in your corner of the war, it isn’t you that dies.

Enter Jeremy Renner in the role of Staff Sergeant William James. James is brought in to serve as team leader for the three-person EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team. He’s the guy that straps on the suit and does the work that gets himself ‘sploded. This is your superhero this summer. He is Mavrick before Goose, and even when you think the guy is going to have a Goose moment and start doubting his cocky attitude and impeccable talent, Jeremy Renner refuses to let the character crack. When he shows up, he scares the living shit out of Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) by not using the robot to find the IED (Improvised Explosive Device) reported somewhere down the street. James just suits up and goes for it. Later, he’ll take off his gigantic not-quite-bomb proof suit to defuse a bomb because if he’s going to die, he’d rather be comfortable.

He’s introduced as the bad ass wild man and continues to be such through the film. There is no doubt that Sgt. James is actually a hot shot, diffusing over 800 bombs and still staying alive. Even when the EOD gets pinned down by sniper fire, James proves himself as a capable leader when explosives aren’t involved. The great thing about a war movie is that you can introduce a character like James, a character who is unquestionably good at what he does – the hero of the story – and still have us fear for his life in every scene because…well, because it’s Iraq not Gotham, God dammit.

Last summer, we had Bruce Wayne asking the big questions, questions about a hero’s place in society and the power of one man on the side of good or evil making a difference; since The Dark Knight has divided superhero movies into two different camps: fantasy-escapism or realism-escapism, where does that leave real superheros in the real world?

Make no mistake, Sgt. James is a superhero. And I’m not saying that because I’m too chickenshit myself to enlist. As Winston Zedmore would say: he has the tools, he has the talent. He’s also a person addicted to the drug of war, and since we’re not talking about a sniper or a SEAL, he’s not placed in a situation where he has to kill on someone else’s orders or make a tactical decision that could turn the tides. All Sgt. James does throughout the whole film is try to save lives, sometimes in a very-real explosion type of way and other times in a more psychological manner.

So, much like Batman, the question that is the most interesting throughout the film is how this changes a person, how it affects them. While Sgt. Sanborn’s will to live practically oozes out his pores and Specialist Eldridge’s fear of death becomes his story purpose, Sgt. James still tries to save lives the only way he knows how. And these attempts aren’t always successful, but in a good superhero story, they never are.

The Hurt Locker as a war movie falls on the exact opposite of the Iraq spectrum as Jarhead. That film was suppose to create the ennui of war in the viewers, and sort of succeeded for better or for worse. The Hurt Locker doesn’t give you a lot of time to breathe, even using a (pardon the seemingly bomb related reference) ticking clock of this particular team’s deployment to move the story towards its conclusion. Kathryn Bigelow knows action, and this is an action movie on its surface.

However, it’s Jeremy Renner who shines in this film as Sgt. James. If I was only reading the dialogue on the page of the script, I would think James was almost too perfect, possibly insane. When he pulls saved bomb-parts out from under his bunk, mementos from things that almost killed him, I was afraid the scene would go all Speed on me with a speech about how a bomb is a beautiful thing that is meant to explode. What really happened was a Renner moment, where the character’s struggle to stay super, to not just become another confused hero who found himself in a war movie. The flaws in Sgt. James are never spoken, they’re acted, and when the film comes to a close, Renner’s performance suddenly rushes at your memory, revealing itself to be the center of the film, a center that is handled very quietly and very deliberately. And you just don’t see that kind of character work in summer films these days.

The Hurt Locker can currently be seen by those of you in New York and Los Angeles that have nifty art-house theaters, cinemas that are slowly getting pushed out of the summer months when everyone else is letting summer tent pole movies take their hard earned recession money.

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