Hot off the recent casting news surrounding James Mangold's The Wolverine (Will Yun Lee will play the villain Silver Samurai and Tao Okamato the love interest Mariko Yashida) comes word now that Jessica Biel has been tapped to play femme fatale Viper (aka Madame Hydra), joining Hugh Jackman onscreen in the movie based on the Chris Claremont/Frank Miller miniseries of the 1980s in which Jackman's character Logan travels to Japan, has some nasty run-ins with ninjas, and falls for a Japanese woman. In the comics, Viper, you may or may not know, rescued Logan from Sabretooth and thus earned his oath of loyalty before joining the criminal organization HYDRA and going on to commit all sorts of mayhem against the likes of the X-Men and the Avengers. Fox has The Wolverine slated for a July 2013 release.

 

Daniel Radcliffe must really, really want to shed that Harry Potter persona. Apparently playing a widowed lawyer in the period thriller The Woman in Black wasn't a far enough stretch; THR reports that now he'll play a suspected rapist/murderer in Horns, a best-selling supernatural fantasy thriller by Joe Hill that will be directed by Alexandre Aja (Piranha, The Hills Have Eyes). In it, Radcliffe's character Ig Parrish, who has become the lead suspect in his girlfriend's killing, awakens one morning with a major hangover to find out not only does his head ache, it's -- say wha?--growing horns. Turns out these horns have the power to pull secrets out of people, which is pretty helpful when you're out to avenge your girl.

What do you think of these casting announcements?