Anna Faris gives new leading man her Number

Once off-track due to a problem in lead actor scheduling, the Anna Faris comedic vehicle What’s Your Number? may be back in the pipeline, thanks to Dave Annable. In a Hollywood Reporter exclusive, Borys Kit noted that the “Brothers and Sisters” star was in negotiations to start opposite Faris as her dream guy.

The synopsis of the film goes like this: “Number centers on a woman (Faris) who treks through her sexual past to find Mr. Right, exploring the idea of sexual quotas and whether such numbers matter.”

Number is adapted from Karyn Bosnak’s 20 Times a Lady by screenwriters Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden; Mark Mylod is the director. Also in the cast and previously announced are Joel McHale (“The Soup,” “Community”) who will be playing Faris’ boss, whom she sleeps with and which encounter kicks off the entire search.

As a woman, I find it very difficult to “bring teh funny” as it were, and any time someone laughs at anything I say or write, it always gives me a little thrill. That’s why I really appreciate female comic actresses like Anna Faris because she’s able to be funny and pretty at the same time in movies that while aren’t my typical cup of tea, I’m not going to outright dismiss because one should always be open to the possibility of enjoying something outside one’s comfort zone.

Also, in doing research for this article, I think I’ve fallen in love a little with novelist Karyn Bosnak, whose blog entry about Joel McHale’s addition to the cast you can find here and contains this enthusiastic endorsement of the leading lady:

As for Anna Faris… Now, I’m not just saying this to kiss ass, and if she was only so-so during the reading I would gush about how cute she is (which she is—she’s petite and gorgeous), but my God… she is so freaking talented. With all due respect to the amazing supporting cast, Anna Faris could be in this movie alone talking to plants and it would still be freaking awesome. I mean, she owns this character and drives this script. Like, anyone could read it aloud and it would be funny. But when Anna reads it, she brings an element to it that you just can’t write. It’s like magic. She’s like magic.

For Bosnak’s sake, I really hope that this movie does well, and not just because she’s a fellow New Yorker transplant.

Summit Entertainment to manage The Impossible with Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor

It seems as if Summit Entertainment has a lot of faith in Naomi Watts these days, for not long after it purchased the rights to one film with with her in it, the studio decided to pick up another.

According to Gregg Kilday at The Hollywood Reporter, the latest buy was for a film called The Impossible, which will star Watts and Ewan McGregor in a story that’s based on some real-life events that took place during the 2004 tsunami that hit Thailand. The film will be directed by Juan Antonio Bayona from a script by Sergio G. Sánchez for two Spanish companies, Apaches Entertainment and Telecino Cinema, who are acting as co-producers.

Looking around at the various websites who also reported on this news, it doesn’t look like anyone from Summit, Apaches, or Telecino wants anyone to know exactly what the film will be about because there isn’t a more detailed synopsis available, not even over at Deadline Hollywood.

Filming will begin in August in Alicante, Spain before moving to Thailand in October; hopefully, we’ll have more concrete news by then.