In today's Callbacks -- your daily roundup of casting news from Deal Central -- Kevin James re-teams with Adam Sandler and Sony; Paramount passes on "Anchorman 2"; John Krasinski and Drew Barrymore save "Whales"; Fox and director David Ayer go "Commando"; and Doug Liman eyes a remake of "Gambit" while Summit agrees to distribute the director's "Fair Game."
• Kevin James will star in and produce the action comedy "Here Comes the Boom" for Sony's Columbia Pictures, reports Variety.
James' "Grown Ups" co-star Salma Hayek is reportedly circling the film's female lead, but no casting deals are done yet.
The logline is currently being kept under wraps, but James wrote the script with his "Zookeeper" screenwriter Rock Reuben, who also wrote and exec produced episodes of James' CBS sitcom "The King of Queens."
Adam Sandler, who co-starred with James in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry," will unfortunately only produce the film through his production company Happy Madison, while James will produce through his Hey Eddie banner.
Broken Road's Todd Garner will also produce, with Jeff Sussman serving as executive producer on the project, which could start shooting as early as January.
"The Zookeeper," which was originally set up at MGM before the studio was put up for sale again and is now a co-production between MGM and Sony, recently moved from October to July 8, 2011 after strong test screening results.
Garner has "Knight and Day" and "The Sorceror's Apprentice" coming out this summer, and he's also producing Sony's Sandler comedy "Jack and Jill," which finds the funnyman playing a pair of brother-sister twins.
Besides "King of Queens," James previously worked with Sony on "50 First Dates" and "Hitch." He next stars opposite Vince Vaughn and Winona Ryder in Ron Howard's infidelity comedy tentatively titled "Cheaters." I think James is extraordinarily talented and completely deserving of his success.
• If you were holding your breath for a sequel to "Anchorman," well, you can exhale now. "Anchorman" director Adam McKay tweeted today that "Anchorman 2" is effectively dead.
McKay (@ghostpanther) http://twitter.com/GhostPanther/status/13086799281">wrote: "So bummed. Paramount basically passed on Anchorman 2. Even after we cut our budget down. We tried." Three hours later, McKay wrote: "To all who asked: no we can't do Anchorman 2 at another studio. Paramount owns it."
Let's get real here -- "Anchorman 2" was never going to happen. Want to know the real reason why, besides the hefty star salaries? Because it doesn't play overseas. Of the film's $90 million worldwide cume, $85 million came from the domestic box office. Of course, "Anchorman" was a hit on DVD, but all the actors have since moved on to successful movie careers, so even if they agreed to take a significant pay cut, I'm not sure a sequel made financial sense for Paramount. 
• John Krasinski and Drew Barrymore will star in Universal's "Whales," a family-friendly fact-based drama about the 1988 rescue of a trio of California gray whales that got trapped under the ice of the Arctic Circle, reports Deadline.
