By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Garrett Hedlund is set to join his "Inside Llewyn Davis" co-star Oscar Isaac in William Monahan's original thriller "Mojave," which Atlas Independent is producing with the filmmaker's Henceforth Pictures banner. Hedlund replaces Jason Clarke in the two-hander, which follows a near-suicidal artist (Hedlund) who escapes into the desert to take an existential crisis head-on, only to encounter a doppelganger-like antagonist in the form of a brilliant, homicidal drifter (Isaac). ...

By Brent Lang LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Samuel L. Jackson will bring his trademark strut and baritone to "Barely Lethal," RKO Pictures announced from the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday. The "Pulp Fiction" actor will co-star opposite Hailee Steinfeld, who nabbed an Oscar nomination for her work in the Coen Brothers' "True Grit." The action-comedy follows a 16-year-old assassin (Steinfeld) who fakes her own death, so she can have a normal high-school experience. But it's a fate worse than detention when her former-employer (Jackson) comes looking for her. ...

By Brent Lang and Lucas Shaw LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Hayden Christensen, his brother Tove Christensen and three additional partners have launched Glacier Films, a new production company that aims to make 11 films over the next three years. Six of those films will be made for around $10 million while another five will be in micro budget movies costing about $1.5 million. Financing for the company comes from Renovatio, which the announcement describes as a "diverse Russian concern." Glacier's first film will be "American Heist," a remake of the 1959 Steve McQueen classic "St. ...

By Brent Lang LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Bruce Willis will star in the action thriller "Expiration," Emmett / Furla Films said Thursday from the Cannes Film Festival. The company will produce and finance the picture, which is budgeted at $60 million. Willis will star as a hitman who is poisoned and desperately searching for an antidote before he dies. Brian Tucker, who handled script duties on the company's "Broken City," wrote the screenplay. No director has been named. Production is set to start in March 2014. ...

By Lucas Shaw NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - The iPad 2 changed Neal Edelstein's life. Edelstein had been working as a producer for more than a decade, making such movies as David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," "The Ring" and "The Ring Two." When Edelstein got the tablet in his hands, he felt he was holding the future of entertainment. He's spent the past two years creating what may be a game-changing Apple-only app, the horror franchise "Haunting Melissa. ...

By Todd Cunningham LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Iron Man 3" was soaring past $1 billion at the worldwide box office Thursday, in a display of world domination that would make one of Marvel's super villains proud. The box-office bounty - roughly $700 million from abroad and $300 million domestically - is a major triumph for Disney, which bet big on comic book superheroes when it bought Marvel Studios for $4 billion in 2009. And its decision to bring aboard a Chinese partner for "Iron Man 3" and focus the Disney marketing machine on the booming foreign market looks pretty good right now, too. ...

By Lucas Shaw NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Zac Efron and Amber Heard will star in "Autobahn," a thriller about an American backpacker (Efron) whose life takes a turn for the worse after joining a scam on behalf of a Turkish gang, IM Global announced on Thursday. IM Global is financing the film, which will shoot in Germany in the fall. Eran Creevy, who wrote and directed "Welcome to the Punch," is directing from a script he co-wrote with F. Scott Frazier. Heard will play Efron's American girlfriend. ...

By Sharon Waxman LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The news that activist shareholder Dan Loeb invited Sony to spin off its entertainment property had the entertainment industry buzzing this week: Who is Dan Loeb and what does he want with Hollywood? The manager of the $12.9 billion hedge fund Third Point Ventures is smart, strategic and - according to an individual close to the hedge fund manager - he's not necessarily interested in entertainment per se. He may, however, be interested in content. "Hollywood is a small piece of business," said this individual, noting that Third Point owns about 5. ...

By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Paul Thomas Anderson continues to cast his adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's novel "Inherent Vice," as Martin Short and Jena Malone are the latest additions to the star-studded ensemble, TheWrap has learned. Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while a representative for Malone had no comment. ...

By Alonso Duralde LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Filmmakers are the parents of their characters in more ways than one; artists don't just give birth, they also have to guide their creations through life. Some filmmakers are too quick to punish flaws and to force their children to melt under their judging gaze; others coddle and rationalize, letting their brats run rampant and pretending that their bad behavior is adorable. ...

CANNES (Reuters) - Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac", one of the most hotly anticipated movies of 2013 for its erotic content and all-star cast, will open in theatres on Christmas Day, the producers said on Thursday. The provocative director, expelled from the Cannes film festival in 2011 for joking that he sympathized with Hitler, cast Charlotte Gainsbourg as the self-diagnosed nymphomaniac of the title, alongside rising Hollywood star Shia LaBeouf. ...

By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Anna Kendrick is set to join the cast of Zach Braff's "Wish I Was Here," which has been made possible by Kickstarter. Kendrick will play Janine, a young woman into Cosplay who Braff's brother, played by Josh Gad, becomes smitten with. Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg are among the producers. Worldview Entertainment recently came on to provide gap financing and executive produce. Kendrick recently starred in the hit comedy "Pitch Perfect" and will soon be seen in "Rapturepalooza."

By Todd Cunningham LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Star Trek Into Darkness" has launched with $3.3 million from Wednesday night screenings at 336 Imax 3D theaters and some midnight shows, Paramount Pictures reported. J.J. Abrams' space epic sequel opened nationwide Thursday in 3,762 theaters and is expected to knock "Iron Man 3" out of the top spot at the box office this weekend. It could take in more than $100 million over its extended debut weekend, analysts say. Expectations surged after Paramount announced sellouts for Wednesday night's shows in New York, L.A. ...

By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Hot off his buzzed-about horror movie "The Cabin in the Woods," Drew Goddard is in negotiations to write and direct "The Martian" for Fox. Based on the e-book by Andy Weir, "The Martian" follows an astronaut who becomes stranded on Mars and must figure out how to survive long enough to return to Earth. The project has been described as a cross between "Apollo 13" and "Cast Away," and insiders say it is quite different from Alfonso Cuaron's upcoming drama "Gravity," which finds Sandra Bullock stranded in space. ...

CANNES, France (AP) — Sofia Coppola was just 8 years old when she first came to the Cannes Film Festival. Her father, Francis Ford Coppola, was there to premiere a work-in-progress cut of a film he had spent years wrestling with: "Apocalypse Now."

CANNES, France (AP) — Emma Watson is reveling in her post-"Potter" freedom at the Cannes Film Festival, relishing a Valley Girl role far from her wise-beyond-her-years Hermione.

By Belinda Goldsmith CANNES (Reuters) - British actress Emma Watson has turned to crime in her latest role as part of a celebrity-obsessed teenage gang robbing their Hollywood idols' homes in a film that made its debut at the Cannes film festival on Thursday. "The Bling Ring", written and directed by Sofia Coppola, is based on a real-life gang fixated by glamour who tracked their targets' whereabouts online and stole $3 million of luxury goods from celebrities including Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. ...

The Hollywood Reporter's list of its 10 best stories of the week: