Joel and Ethan Coen are in the process of putting together one of the best actor ensembles they've ever worked with for their upcoming film - and that's saying a lot given their history. George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Channing Tatum, Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes have all been named as being attached to the film, and now two more incredibly talented stars.
Both The Wrap and Variety are reporting that Jonah Hill and Scarlett Johansson are now both in talks to join the cast of Hail, Caesar!, the new Coen brothers period comedy. Based on an original screenplay by the directors, the movie is set in the 1950s and follows Eddie Mannix, a behind the scenes Hollywood player who works to try and keep celebrity scandals away from the tabloids. Clooney will be playing Mannix, Tatum is playing a movie star, Fiennes is playing a director, and Swinton is playing a gossip columnist. Hill's part is being kept under wraps for now, but Johannson will be playing a female movie star who gets pregnant just as the film she is attached to goes into production. This is funny given that this happened with Johansson earlier this year with the filming of The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
This casting marks the continuation of a great stretch for Jonah Hill, who is just coming off working with Martin Scorsese on The Wolf of Wall Street. Hail, Caesar! will reunite Hill and Tatum, who starred together in 21 Jump Street, The LEGO Movie, and 22 Jump Street earlier this year. It's unclear at this point if the two actors will actually share any scenes together in the Coen brothers film.
While many may have forgotten this, Scarlett Johansson actually already has a Coen brothers movie on her resume. In 2001, she had a key role opposite Billy Bob Thornton in The Man Who Wasn't There, playing an innocent girl with a talent for playing the piano.
The Coens are planning to start production on Hail Caesar this fall, which means that we can probably expect to see the finished cut in theaters sometime in 2015. Scarlett Johansson will next be on the big screen as the titular character in writer/director Luc Besson's Lucy, which comes out later this month. Hill, meanwhile, most recently wrapped on the Rupert Goold-directed True Story, which sees the actor playing a journalist and James Franco as an FBI Most Wanted criminal who steals his name.
