In today's Callbacks -- your daily roundup of casting news from Deal Central -- Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper go on a "Honeymoon With Harry," the "Juno" team of Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody land an Oscar-winning actress for "Young Adult," "Lost" director Jack Bender may trade Jack Shephard for Jack Ryan, and Sigourney Weaver decides to mess with Bruce Willis' son in "The Cold Light of Day."
Previously on Deal Central: Lee Pace befriends "Breaking Dawn" co-star Robert Pattinson, Davis Guggenheim pulls a 180 and moves from documentaries to a 3D biopic of teen pop star Justin Bieber, and Deal Central celebrates Kevin Smith's 40th birthday with a retrospective of the foul-mouthed filmmaker's career.
*Today's edition of Callbacks is brought to you by Deadline. Deal Central readers are encouraged to send tips to jeff@thewrap.com, where they are always appreciated.
• Oscar winner Robert De Niro and "The A-Team" member Bradley Cooper are attached to star in the New Line dramedy "Honeymoon With Harry."
Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme ("The Silence of the Lambs") is circling the long-gestating project, which is adapted by Oscar-winning screenwriter Paul Haggis ("Crash") from an unpublished novel by Bart Baker.
While there are no deals yet, if all goes according to plan, Cooper would play a formerly self-centered, hard-drinking womanizer who changes his ways when he meets a girl and falls in love, while De Niro would play the girl's father, who recognizes himself in the young man and tries to break them up. The young lovers get engaged, but when the girl dies in a tragic accident just before the wedding, the groom heads off on their honeymoon to drown his sorrows and drinks himself to death. There, he meets his would-be father-in-law, who has come to spread his daughter's ashes on her favorite beach.
It sounds like a bit like the underrated "Moonlight Mile," if Jake Gyllenhaal and Dustin Hoffman's characters didn't have Susan Sarandon propping them up.
New Line and producer Mike Karz began developing the project in 2004 after buying Baker's novel, which still hasn't found a publisher, though that shouldn't be a problem if the movie gets made.
Haggis was hired to write the screenplay before he wrote back-to-back Best Picture winners, and eventually he was hired to direct. At one point, Vince Vaughn and Jack Nicholson flirted with the project, but New Line and Haggis couldn't agree on a budget and then the studio folded and the writer's strike happened.
Eventually, Cooper became interested and got De Niro involved after they co-starred together in Neil Burger's upcoming thriller "Dark Fields." The duo are represented by CAA, while ICM represents Demme.
• Oscar winner Charlize Theron is set to star in "Young Adult," a dark comedy set up at Mandate Pictures that will reunite Oscar-nominated "Juno" director Jason Reitman with Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, as well as that film's producers.
