Casting Net: Emma Stone attached to Cameron Crowe romance. Plus: Russell Brand, Taylor Kitsch, Bill Murray

• Emma Stone is joining an exclusive club whose members include Scarlett Johansson, Kirsten Dunst, Penélope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Renee Zellweger, and Ione Skye — the female lead of a Cameron Crowe film. The untitled romance, also penned by Crowe, is aiming to start shooting in the spring for Sony Pictures. [Deadline]

• Russell Brand is in opening negotiations for Pierre Pierre, an off-color comedy about a French cynic smuggling a stolen painting from Paris to London. Larry Charles (Borat) is attached to direct the script, from first-time writers Edwin Cannistraci and Frederick Seton. [Variety]

• Taylor Kitsch and Brendan Gleeson will headline The Grand Seduction, an indie remake of the French Canadian film La Grand Seduction about a resident of a small, economically-imperiled Canadian village (Gleeson) who enlists his town to help convince a visiting doctor (Kitsch) to move in for good. Actor and filmmaker Don McKellar (Last Night) will direct from a script by Michael Dowse (Goon) and Ken Scott (who also penned the original film). [Deadline]

• True Blood‘s Nelsan Ellis will play civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. in The Butler, director Lee Daniels‘ star-studded biopic of Eugene Allen (Forest Whitaker), who worked at the White House over the course of eight presidential administrations. Ellis joins (deep breath) Robin Williams, James Marsden, Alan Rickman, Melissa Leo, Minka Kelly, Jane Fonda, Mariah Carey, Vanessa Redgrave, Alex Pettyfer, and Oprah Winfrey, as Allen’s wife. Daniels wrote the script with Danny Strong (HBO’s Game Change). [Deadline]

• Bill Murray is in preliminary talks to star in St. Vincent De Van Nuys, about an irascible retired war vet (Murray) who befriends a 12-year-old boy whose parents have just divorced. Ted Melfi is attached to direct his screenplay, which was on the 2011 Black List. [Variety]

• The Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi will supervise Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in The Internship, playing the director of the internship program at a major technology company, which Vaughn and Wilson’s characters join to reboot their careers. Shawn Levy is directing from a script written by Vaughn. [Deadline]

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