Casting Net: Rooney Mara boards Todd Haynes film with Cate Blanchett

• Rooney Mara (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) just signed on to work with another modern auteur, Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven), for Carol, and adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt. She’ll star alongside the venerable Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) in the film about two women in 1950s New York. Mara will play the part of Therese, a young shopgirl with dreams of the future, and Blanchett, an elegant thirtysomething woman in an unhappy marriage. Their relationship escalates when the two decide to take a road trip west. Mia Wasikowska was previously attached to the role. [Deadline]

• The always funny Megan Mullally (Children’s Hospital) and Jennifer Coolidge (Austenland) have joined Disney’s adaptation of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which is currently filming. [Deadline]

• Comedian Mike Birbiglia, who wrote, directed, and starred in 2012’s Sleepwalk with Me, will play a group leader in the Shailene Woodley-starring adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. Green, currently on location in Pittsburgh for the shoot, tweeted the news Wednesday.

• Vincent Cassel (Black Swan) is joining the already-in-production Soviet thriller Child 44 in a role that Philip Seymour Hoffman was previously attached to play. Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) is directing the adaptation, based on Tom Rob Smith’s novel. Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, and Joel Kinnaman, also star. [Deadline]

• My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Nia Vardalos and Percy Jackson’s Jake Abel are heading up the indie Forget Me Not about a pair of siblings who are conflicted about giving their mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, permission to carry on a relationship with another person at her nursing home. [The Wrap]

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