Alba joins Myers in ''Love Guru''

Alba, Troyer in Love Guru
Jessica Alba, Verne Troyer (Austin Powers), and Romany Malco (Blades of Glory, 40-Year-Old Virgin) have joined Mike Myers in the cast of The Love Guru for Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment. Myers will play Pitka, an American raised by gurus in India who moves to the U.S. where he gets involved in resolving a rift between a professional hockey player (Malco) and his estranged wife, who starts an affair with a rival hockey player. This sends Malco’s character into a professional slump. Alba plays the hockey team owner and Troyer plays the coach. Myers is producing with Michael De Luca. The movie is slotted for a June 20 release. Alba will next star in the romantic comedy Good Luck Chuck with Dane Cook and the thriller The Eye for C/W Prods. (Hollywood Reporter)

Garcia, Cleese join Pink Panther
Andy Garcia, John Cleese, Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, The Company), and Indian actress Aishwarya Rai will appear alongside Steve Martin in Columbia Pictures/MGM’s The Pink Panther 2. Jean Reno and Emily Mortimier are also on board to reprise their roles from the original. Cleese will play chief inspector Dreyfus, while Garcia, Molina, and Rai will play detectives and experts who team with Clouseau (Martin) to catch a thief who has been stealing artifacts around the world. Harald Zwart (Agent Cody Banks) will direct. Shawn Levy helmed the previous installation. Panther 2 is scheduled to release Feb. 13, 2009. The 2006 original hauled in more than $140 million worldwide. (Variety)

Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell tapped for Defiance
Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell (Flags of Our Fathers), Alexa Davalos (Fox’s Reunion), and Tomas Arana (Bourne Supremacy) will join Daniel Craig in Defiance, a World War II drama for Paramount Vantage. Ed Zwick (Blood Diamond) will direct from his own screenplay. The story is about Jewish brothers (Craig, Schreiber, and Bell) who escape Nazi-occupied Poland and join Russian resistance fighters in battling the Nazis. They build a village hidden in the forest and save more than 1,200 Jews. Zwick’s screenplay is based on Nechama Tec’s book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. Davalos will play a Polish refugee and the love interest of Craig’s character, and Arana will play a leader in the resistance. Schreiber next appears in the indie satire The Ten and recently finished shooting Love in the Time of Cholera. Bell just wrapped shooting on the sci-fi movie Jumper, and Davalos will next appear in Robert Benton’s Feast of Love, opposite Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear, and Frank Darabont’s upcoming collaboration with Stephen King, The Mist. (Hollywood Reporter)

Monaghan starring with LaBeouf in Eagle Eye
Michelle Monaghan (Mission Impossible III, Mr. and Mrs. Smith) will star opposite Shia LaBeouf in the action movie Eagle Eye for DreamWorks. D.J. Caruso, who directed LaBeouf in Disturbia, will also direct Eye. The story is about a young man (LaBeouf) and his mother (Monaghan) who are falsely accused of being terrorists and forced to join a cell planning an assassination. Monaghan will next appear opposite Ben Stiller in The Heartbreak Kid. (Hollywood Reporter)

Colin Hanks in Faris/Sandler’s Playboy project
Colin Hanks (King Kong) has been cast as the male lead in an untitled project about a Playboy bunny, played by Anna Faris, who is kicked out of the Mansion and becomes the housemother for a lame sorority. Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison is producing the project, which also features Katharine McPhee, Monet Mazur, Kiely Williams of the Cheetah Girls, All-American Rejects frontman Tyson Ritter, Owen Benjamin, Rachel Specter, and Beverly D’Angelo. Mazur will play an evil Playboy bunny; Williams will play a member of the lame sorority; Ritter is a frat guy, and Benjamin will play a butler seduced by Mazur. D’Angelo is the house mom of the bitchy sorority, of which Specter is a part. Shooting is already underway. Hanks will next be seen in Sean McGinley’s The Great Buck Howard, which stars Tom Hanks, Emily Blunt, and John Malkovich. (Hollywood Reporter)

Pavarotti hospitalized in Northern Italy
Opera star Luciano Pavarotti has been admitted to a hospital in his hometown of Modena for medical checks. In July of last year, Pavarotti underwent an operation to remove a malignant pancreatic tumor. The 71-year old singer has not been seen in public since, causing concern about his health. A newspaper reported that he now has pneumonia, but a spokesperson would not confirm that report. (Reuters)

Walken, Nivola starring in Five Dollars a Day
Christopher Walken and Allesandro Nivola (Face/Off, Grace is Gone) will star in Capitol Films/ThinkFilm’s road movie Five Dollars a Day, about a conman and his more conservative son, who served time in jail for one of his father’s crimes. Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls) is directing based on a script by Neal and Tippi Dobrofsky. Shooting is set to begin in September. Walken next appears in Rogue’s Balls of Fury, and Nivola can be seen on TNT’s The Company and in the upcoming thriller The Eye, which stars Jessica Alba and Parker Posey. (Variety)

Power of 10 logs summer-high ratings for CBS
CBS’ new quiz show The Power of 10, featuring host Drew Carey, averaged a 2.7 rating/9 share in adults 18-49 and 9.23 million viewers overall on Tuesday (Aug. 7), running second only to NBC’s America’s Got Talent, which got a 3.2/10 in the demo and 10.84 million viewers overall. Power logged summer-high ratings for CBS in its 8 p.m. time period. The show has moved to Wednesday at 8 p.m., where it will run throughout the rest of the summer. The show awarded a million dollars to its very first contestant. (Variety)

ABC orders Cedric the Entertainer pilot
ABC has ordered an untitled, multi-camera comedy from ABC Studios starring Cedric the Entertainer. The comedian will play a man who has difficulty adjusting when his wife’s hobby turns into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Cedric helped pen the script with King of Queens alums Rock Reuben and Michael Soccio. (Hollywood Reporter)

Casablanca getting Indian remake
Indian filmmaker Rajeev Nath is remaking Casablanca, swapping Rick’s Cafe in the 1942 original for a restaurant in South India, and the World War II setting for the conflict in Sri Lanka. ”My film will be a tribute to the original,” said Nath, who is titling his remake Ezham Mudra (The Seventh Seal). Nath’s protagonist is an Indian diplomat-turned restaurateur who helps his lover and her husband, both Tamil separatist rebels fighting the Sri Lankan government, escape from India. Shooting is scheduled to start next month for a 2008 release. (Hollywood Reporter)

CELEBRITY NEWS

People.com: Melanie ”Scary Spice” Brown secretly married her boyfriend, music producer Stephen Belafonte, in Las Vegas in June. The former Spice Girl is in the middle of a bitter paternity battle with Eddie Murphy over their daughter, Angel Iris Murphy Brown.

Rush & Molloy: Chris Noth has signed on to reprise his role as Carrie’s love interest in the upcoming Sex and the City movie.