Casting Net: Cynthia Nixon set to play poet Emily Dickinson. Plus: Sean Bean, Tom Wilkinson, Peter Facinelli

• Cynthia Nixon is attached to play Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion, a biopic about the life of the solitary poet whose thousands of poems were almost exclusively published after she died. Director Terence Davies (House of Mirth, The Deep Blue Sea) also penned the screenplay. [THR]

• Sean Bean will star in the thriller Scorched Earth, a post-apocalyptic thriller about a bounty hunter (Bean) hunting for a master criminal. Brad Turner (Fox’s 24) will direct from a script by Bobby Mort and Kevin Leeson. [Deadline]

• Tom Wilkinson will costar with Joel Edgerton in Felony, about a cop (Edgerton) who lies about a car accident involving him and a kid on a bicycle. Edgerton also penned the screenplay, which Australian TV director Matthew Saville will helm. [Variety]

• Peter Facinelli (The Twilight Saga, Showtime’s Nurse Jackie) will star in the horror film Gallows Hill, about an American family in Columbia who find themselves at a creepy inn with a girl held captive in the basement. Sophia Myles (Underworld) and Nathalia Ramos (Nickelodeon’s House of Anubis) costar. Victor Garcia (Hellraiser: Revelations) is directing from a script by David D’Ovidio. [THR]

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