Casting Net: Aaron Paul taking 'A Long Way Down.' Plus: Eric Bana, Christoph Waltz, Richard Dreyfuss

• Aaron Paul will join Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, and Imogen Poots in A Long Way Down, an adaptation of Nick Hornsby‘s novel about four people who make a pact to kill themselves together on New Year’s Eve. (Which, somehow, sounds more upbeat than the woes of Paul’s Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad.) French filmmaker Pascal Chaumeil (Heartbreaker) is directing from a screenplay by British writer Jack Thorne (the UK version of Skins). [Deadline]

• Eric Bana will go to war with Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, and Ben Foster in Lone Survivor, based on the memoir by real life Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell (played by Wahlberg in the film). The military thriller, adapted and directed by Peter Berg (Battleship, The Kingdom), follows a mission in Afghanistan that goes very, very bad (hence the book’s title). Bana certainly knows from movies about military operations that go wrong: His first Hollywood film was 2001’s Black Hawk Down. [THR]

• Christoph Waltz has signed up for director Terry Gilliam‘s The Zero Theorem, which sounds like a quintessentially Terry Gilliam-y film: An oddball, reclusive computer genius named Qohen Leth seeks to discover the meaning of life while contending with a monolithic totalitarian government. [Deadline]

• Richard Dreyfuss has signed onto Cas & Dylan, actor Jason Priestley‘s directorial debut, about a man with a terminal illness who finds himself on the run with a younger woman (Tatiana Maslany, The Vow). Jessie Gabe(Being Erica) penned the script. [THR]

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Casting Net: Shia LaBeouf courting Lars von Trier’s ‘Nymphomaniac.’ Plus: Ryan Reynolds, Malin Akerman, Kim Basinger

Casting Net: Reese Witherspoon will be ‘The Beard.’ Plus: Julianne Hough, Jonathan Rhys Meyers