Casting Net: Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams set for Prohibition-era drama

• Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams will play Prohibition Era lovers (or, potential mates) in Ezekiel Moss. Philip Seymour Hoffman has been attached to direct the pic for some time off of Keith Bunin’s Black List script. The story revolves around Iris (Adams) a widower who runs a boarding house to support her son Joel in a small, religious town. She falls for a drifter, Gyllenhaal’s Ezekiel Moss, who can “channel and physically inhabit the spirits of the dead.” [THR]

• Liam Neeson is set to star in Martin Scorsese’s Silence, about two Jesuit priests who travel to Japan on a mission to spread Christianity. Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, and Ken Watanabe also star in the Jay Cocks-scripted pic, adapted from the late Shûsaku Endô’s 1971 novel. Production is expected to begin in Taiwan later this year. Scorsese and Neeson previously worked together on 2002’s Gangs of New York. [Deadline]

• Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights) will play Cate Blanchett’s husband in Carol, the Todd Haynes pic based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt. Rooney Mara and Sarah Paulson also star in the Phillis Nagy-penned adaptation. [Deadline]

• Alfre Woodard has joined the horror movie Annabelle, The Conjuring spinoff featuring that creepy possessed doll. James Wan’s Conjuring cinematographer John Leonetti is directing the pic, which began shooting this week in Los Angeles. [Variety]

• Emma Thompson is set to star alongside Ray Winstone in Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut The Long Midnight of Barney Thompson. Carlyle will also star as the title character in the thriller about a Scottish barber who “stumbles into a serial murder.” Thompson will play his mother. [The Wrap]

• Jessica Alba has joined The Wright Girls, a comedy about sitcom co-stars who are roommates in real life. Entourage star Kevin Connolly is directing the pic, and has worked with Alba in this capacity previously on the movie Dear Eleanor. [Variety]

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