Casting Net: Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, and Kevin Hart get animated

• Louis C.K. (American Hustle), Eric Stonestreet (Modern Family), and Kevin Hart (Ride Along) will all provide voices for the next animated film from the creators of Despicable Me. Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures will produce the action comedy set in a Manhattan apartment building, which is currently being called Untitled Pets Movie. Chris Renaud (Despicable Me) will direct with Yarrow Cheney from a script by Despicable Me writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. Stonestreet and Louis C.K. will voice rival dogs, while Hart will play bunny Snowball, the leader of an army of abandoned pets. The film is scheduled for a February 2016 release. [Deadline]

• Lesley Ann Warren (Victor/Victoria) will star in two upcoming independent films, shooting them back to back. Warren will first co-star with Max Burkholder (The Purge) in the comedy Babysitter from writer-director Morgan Krantz and then in The Sphere and the Labyrinth from writer-director Michael Robertson Moore, playing a science-fiction author. [The Wrap]

• British actor John Boyega (Half of a Yellow Sun) has been chosen to play Olympic athlete Jesse Owens in Race. Directed by Stephen Hopkins (The Life and Death of Peter Sellers), shooting is set to begin in May in Berlin and Montreal. The film will focus on Owens’ triumphant 1936 Olympic games, where he won four gold medals against the backdrop of Hitler’s Nazi regime. [Variety]

Previously:Hugh Jackman officially signs on for Pan