Celebrity Update John Cusack is taking the role of Edgar Allan Poe in James McTeigue’s thriller The Raven. The story would be set in Baltimore during the 1850s.

ComingSoon.net first learned about the project when we spoke to McTeigue for his previous movie Ninja Assassin, and he told us that his movie wouldn’t be a straight adaptation of Poe’s poem, as much as a serial killer thriller in which the famed horror author would have to solve clues of a string of murders based on his stories.

Celebrity Update Katie Holmes is in talk to star in Jack and Jill together with Adam Sandler and Al Pacino. According to THR, Adam will play both Jack and his twin sister Jill. “The man version of me has a family out in LA,” Adam has explained. “The twin-sister version of me lives out in the Bronx and comes out to LA for Thanksgiving and then refuses to leave.”

Holmes is set to play Sandler’s wife, while Al Pacino has been cast to play himself. If all goes to plan, Jack and Jill will be Holmes’ first studio film since Batman Begins.

Celebrity Update Jim Carrey has signed on to play the lead in Mr. Popper’s Penguins according to Deadline. Mark Waters is directing the film from a script by Jared Stern, who is rewriting the original screenplay from Sean Anders and John Morris.

The film is based off the 1938 book by Richard Atwater and Florence Atwater, which revolves around a humble house painter who receives a penguin in the mail from Admiral Drake’s voyage to Antarctica. When the one penguin turns into 12, Popper decides to turn his penguins into performers so he can continue to feed and house them.

Celebrity Update Britney Spears will make a cameo appearance on the upcoming “Glee” episode that will be devoted to the pop star’s music, the show’s creator Ryan Murphy said Tuesday. According to Murphy “Britney, I think 100 percent, is going to be on the episode. She is going to join us for a couple of scenes,”

The show will supposedly involve various members of the glee club going under anesthesia at the dentist’s office and hallucinating about Spears, having “fantasies of how they can be like her.”

Celebrity Update Scarlett Johansson is the new big star to join Vince Vaughan in Dave O. Russell’s new movie Old St. Louis.

The story follows a traveling toy salesman who reconnects with his estranged teenage daughter, whom he hasn’t seen after many years on the road. Chloe Moretz is set to play the daughter, with Scarlett Johansson appearing as the love interest who quits her job as a secretary to join the newly reacquainted father-daughter duo as they head off on a cross-country sales run together.

Celebrity Update Kurt Russell gets the role of head high school football coach for the movie Touchback. He will be joined by Brian Presley, Melanie Lynskey as his wife, and Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Christine Lahti as his mother. Marc Blucas, Drew Powell, Sarah Wright, Sianoa Smit-McPhee and Kevin Covais also star.

In Touchback, “Murphy,” played by Brian Presley, is a down-on-his-luck small town farmer and volunteer fireman whose glorious high school football days were cut short when he was critically injured during a playoff game. He often wonders “what if” and then is unexpectedly thrust from the present day back to that fateful instant that changed his life forever. But this time around “Murphy” has the choice to decide if he wants the life he has or the life that could have been.

Celebrity Update Sasha Grey who impressed many with her mainstream feature debut in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience last year, is up for a role in Mark Pellington’s indie drama I Melt with You.

The character drama follows college friends (Jane, Lowe and Piven) who, as adults, find something missing when they have their annual summer reunion. They restart a pact they originally “vowed to live, die and kill by.”

Grey is going to play the character of Raven. She is a free spirit who helps one of the men realize that nirvana can only be achieved by death.

Celebrity Update Cillian Murphy is set to star in the British thriller The Retreat opposite Thandie Newton, set to start shooting in Wales in September. Sony Pictures has already claimed the UK distribution rights to the movie about a married couple who rent a cottage on a remote island to fix their marriage, plans cut short when a soldier wearing a biohazard suit washes up on the beach claiming that everyone on the mainland has been killed by a virus.

The 34-year-old actor, who was last seen in Inception, will play Thandie’s husband in the story of a couple trying to repair their marriage by renting an isolated island cottage.

Celebrity Update Justin Timberlake has offered a role in a Sci-fi film Im.Mortal. Amanda Seyfried was already offered a role. Justin could be a viable candidate for the reality show if he wasn’t so busy making music and trying to have a movie career.

I’m.mortal is set in a futuristic dystopia where humans no longer age and the world’s currency is in the form of time allowed to spent living. The rich people get a chance to live infinitely while the rest of the common folk are forced to bargain for their life. Timberlake would play a guy who’s run out of time and takes a hostage (Seyfried) in an effort to stay alive. Andrew Niccol (Lord of War) wrote the script and will also direct.

Celebrity Update Daniel Craig has been confirmed to star in in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on Stieg Larsson’s posthumously published crime thriller trilogy, “The Millennium Series.” The deal includes two sequels based on The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.

Craig will star as sullied journalist Mikael Blomkvist in David Fincher’s adaptation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which is based on Stieg Larsson’s bestselling novel, ComingSoon.net reports. Craig also is linked to the remaining parts of the literary trilogy, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest,” if Fincher’s film takes off.