News: Billy Bob Thornton

Everyone’s favourite oddball Southerner, doing his best to fill the near-legendary Terry-Thomas’ shoes in this weeks School for Scoundrels remake, has another comedy up next, starring as the titular sadistic gym teacher Mr Woodcock opposite Seann William Scott and Susan Sarandon. He’s rather good at doing deeply unpleasant yet somehow entertaining characters, so this tale of the old childhood fear of a hated teacher getting it on with your mother is bound to be one of those amusing yet uncomfortable flicks when it hits our screens on 11th May.

Also on the way – completed, just not yet set for release this side of the pond, is drama The Astronaut Farmer, with Billy Bob a retired astronaut who decides to build his own rocket on his farm in his desperation to get into space. Early reports are promising – assuming you don’t mind such sentimental premises, that is… After that he’ll play a father whose family face off against a gang of local thugs in an adaptation of the Leif Enger novel Peace Like A River, which should shortly be going into production.

News: Woody Harrelson

Despite still being a big name, Harrelson hasn’t had any especially high-profile roles for quite a while, generally appearing in relatively minor parts in relatively small films – with his turn in this week’s Altman ensemble piece A Prairie Home Companion and the recent A Scanner Darkly being his biggest for a fair few years. He has a fair few movies in the works, though, and must surely have enough money in the bank not to care any more, so it looks rather like he’s choosing his projects deliberately and carefully.

Amongst the numerous flicks in the pipeline are animated stoner comedy Free Jimmy, alongside British faves Simon Pegg, Phil Daniels, Samantha Morton, David Tennant and Emilia Fox, as well as Indy flick hero Kyle MacLachlan. Not yet set for release on either side of the Atlantic (perhaps because it involves the search for a junkie elephant, hardly good for the kids), it nonetheless has received favourable reviews on the festival circuit.

Also promising is his starring role as a middle-aged gigolo in The Walker from writer/director Paul Shrader – a thematic sequel to his 1980 Richard Gere-starring American Gigolo, as well as his turn in the Coen brother’s latest, No Country For Old Men (alongside his A Prairie Home Companion co-star Tommy Lee Jones).

Another flick likely to catapult Harrelson back into the limelight is the intriguing thriller Transsiberia where, alongside Emily Mortimer and ben Kingsley, he will play one half of an American couple caught up in comspiracy and murder while travelling the Trans-Siberian Railway through China and Russia – although the Will Ferrell baseball comedy Semi-Pro is most likely to earn him mega-bucks.

Nonetheless, he’s not avoiding the smaller and more controversial flicks, with the entirely improvised poker comedy The Grand doubtless an interesting experience (for the actors, at least), and an ideal film for someone so associated with his political activities in the real world, The Battle in Seattle – set around anti-World Trade organisation demonstrations that descend into riot and violence. Despite the lefty politics – still unpopular in the US, though likely to be coming to the fore a bit more by its December Stateside release with the excitement of the Presidential primaries – the likes of Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon and Ray Liotta on the poster could well see it do well.

News: Ian McKellen

Sir Ian is still insanely busy, with this week’s Flushed Away just the lastest in a whole slew of movie projects that have kicked off since his roaring successes in the X-Men and Lord of the Rings trilogies.

The veteran Shakespearian actor has three more movies currently in the pipeline – as well as a bit more stage work lined up for Spring 2007, taking the lead role in King Lear and that of patriarch Sorin in Checkov’s The Seagull, both for director Sir Trevor Nunn, at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Running from March to June, quite how Sir Ian will find time to make more movies is anyone’s guess.

On the film front, though, McKellen provided a voice-over for low-budget British sci-fi flick Displaced while filming for TV soap Coronation Street last year, and is apparently set to appear in the X-Men spin-off Magneto – a prequel that will explore how the supervillain became the evil metal-attracting mastermind that we know from the films (and comics), and his early friendship with X-Men leader Charles Xavier. The rest of the cast has not yet been announced, although Patrick Stewart is rumoured to be in talks.

McKellen’s biggest film role in the next year or so is therefore going to be as near-legendary (and somewhat controversial, to put it mildly) British imperial hero Cecil Rhodes in an intriguing-sounding adaptation of ann Harries’ complex historical novel The Collossus. Set at the end of the 19th century, it follows the travels of an Oxford professor – to be played by Colin Firth – to Africa during the latter days of Rhodes’ rule, and his gradual realisation of the inevitability of the impending Boer War. Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon will co-star.

To keep up with all his latest news, you could do a lot worse than bookmark Sir Ian’s excellent website.

News: Helena Bonham Carter

Despite having won yet more rave reviews as the beleaguered mother in this week’s latest addition to the ranks of British light comedy that is Sixty Six, Bonham Carter’s next project was an altogether more hammy role – as the somewhat sinister and decidedly scruffy-looking pure-blood Bellatrix Lestrange in next summer’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. With her added to the cast, there’s practically no big-name British actor left who hasn’t appeared in the Harry Potter franchise…

Bonham Carter does have a few more “serious” roles coming up in the next year, however. She’ll take on the role of Collette alongside Susan Sarandon’s Eleanor in Eleanor & Collette – a story of female bonding as Bonham Carter’s lawyer and Sarandon’s psychiatric patient come together to sue a mental hospital. She will also be taking on a spot of romantic comedy, as one half of a pair of ex-lovers who are reunited within the confines of a transatlantic flight, in Stand By Love.

Surely most anticipated, however – although probably not for the Harry Potter fans among you – will be the Johnny Depp-starring Sweeny Todd, based on the hit Broadway musical and directed by Bonham Carter’s quirky long-term boyfriend (and father of her son) Tim Burton. As Depp and Burton have – as yet – failed to make a bad film together after five joint projects, it should be something pretty special…