Casting News -- April 29, 2009

Shia LaBeouf is in talks to co-star as a young Wall Street trader in Wall Street 2, the long-rumored upcoming sequel to Oliver Stone's Wall Street. Michael Douglas will return as Gordon Gekko, the role for which he won a Best Actor Oscar in 1987; Oliver Stone will also return as director. The film is set 20 years after the original, and the plot will revolve around Gekko's life after he gets out of jail during the current economic climate.

Fantasia Barrino will return to the role of Celie in the national tour of The Color Purple once again when the production plays at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago Sept. 2-13. The American Idol winner was already scheduled to reprise her role for the tour's summer engagement at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, June 30-Aug. 2; she joined the Broadway company of The Color Purple in April 2007.

Danny Huston has been cast as Poseidon in Clash of the Titans, a retelling of the Perseus myth. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes star. The cast also includes Sam Worthington, Mads Mikkelsen, Gemma Arterton, Jason Flemyng, and Alexa Davalos.

Rick Springfield will play himself in four episodes of Californication. Producers of the Showtime series had been looking for "an actor who experienced huge fame in the '80s to play themselves as a now down-on his-luck ex-celebrity waiting tables to get by," which means the "Jessie's Girl" singer and former General Hospital actor must not be afraid to poke fun at himself.

Susannah Mars has been cast as Eva Peron in the Broadway Rose Theatre Company's upcoming production of Evita. The musical runs July 29-Aug. 16 in the Deb Fennell Auditorium at the Broadway Rose Theatre Company in Oregon.

Noureen DeWulf has been cast opposite Jennifer Lopez in The Back-Up Plan, a romantic comedy about a fed-up wannabe mother (Lopez) who meets a promising romantic prospect on the same day she undergoes artificial insemination. DeWulf will play Daphne, a hip downtown co-worker at Lopez's pet store. DeWulf has also been cast in the Lifetime miniseries Maneater with Judy Greer and Sarah Chalke, as well as the Fox comedy pilot Two Dollar Beer.

-- Daniel Lehman