Variety reports that Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga (The Departed) have joined the cast of Dark Castle's Orphan. In a nod to Bad Seeds everywhere, the film focuses on a young couple (Sarsgaard and Farmiga) that have recently lost a child and decide to adopt a young girl to fill the void. Of course, nothing is ever that easy and the girl "is not nearly as innocent as she claims to be". David Leslie, a relative newcomer, wrote the screenplay based off an idea by Alex Mace. Already signed to direct is House of Wax helmer, Jaume Collet-Serra. Serra started off directing TV commercials and music videos, and Wax was his first big-budget production. Orphan seems like a definite step up for Serra; when your casting pool goes from Paris Hilton to Peter Sarsgaard you must be doing something right.

Sarsgaard has already completed the Philip Roth adaptation Elegy with Penelope Cruz, and is wrapping up work on two more literary adaptations. First up is In the Electric Mist; based on James Lee Burke's novel about "A detective in the deep South is led into a series of surreal encounters with a troop of Confederate soldiers" and Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Farmiga is currently filming Nothing But The Truth, a political drama with Kate Beckinsale and will next star in a literary adaptation of her own called The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas for Mark Herman (Brassed Off). Orphan is set to start shooting next week on location in Toronto and Montreal, Canada.

Vurdalak, huh? Now there's a term you don't hear too often. Usually when I hear the word I think of Mario Bava's 1963 film I Tre Volti Della Paura (known here in the states as Black Sabbath) in which Boris Karloff played a vurdalak, a vampire that preys only on those it loved most in life. A report in Variety tells us Vurdalak is a "neo-medieval" tale to be produced by Spain's Andres Vicente Gomez and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, whose best-known film is probably the 2005 remake of House of Wax. I haven't seen that flick, but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the man who directed Paris Hilton's on-screen demise.

The film is described as a tale of vengeance between two bloodthirsty warlords. A character named Safet is the only survivor following the mass slaughter of his family at the hands of Prince Verjik. Driven by hate, Safet becomes a living dead vurdalak, which would seem to eliminate the whole preying on his loved ones angle used in the Bava film. Collet-Serra will also serve as screenwriter, and he has already turned in a first draft. The film is being produced through Gomez's RadioPlus, and San Francisco's Massive Black studio has started pre-visualizations and digital design.

Gomez is also very interested in the video game potential of the film. According to the Variety piece, Spanish revenue from theatrical and DVD movies has dropped 5 to 6% because of online piracy, but video game sales have increased by 18% in Spain in 2006 as opposed to the European average of 10%. Hey, if we can kill Paris Hilton in the video game, sign me up!

The latest Hollywood actor to play a famous painter is Jared Padalecki, who has been cast as still-living artist Thomas Kinkade (aka "Painter of Light"). Though he probably won't go down in cinematic history like Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh, Jeffrey Wright as Basquiat or (yet to be seen) Al Pacino as Dalí, Padalecki will be supported by a possibly memorable performance from the great Peter O'Toole, who will play the artist Glen Wessler, a mentor to the young Kinkade. He will also have the benefit of playing the artist in a trilogy. After the first movie, The Christmas Cottage, which follows Kinkade as a teen on the verge of deciding to become an artist, there will be two more pics portraying the artist as a young man (unless Lionsgate plans to wait years between movies and use Padalecki a la Jean-Pierre Léaud -- which I doubt).

When the news was out that Lionsgate would make a movie based on Thomas Kinkade's painting The Christmas Cottage, I had thought the artwork was simply serving as inspiration for a fictional holiday movie set in the depicted wintry home (Yawn). Now that I know the movie actually focuses on the life of Kinkade I am no more interested, but it at least makes more sense to me. Living commercial artists, especially those as commercial as Kinkade, aren't very worthy of biopic treatment, but Kinkade is so popular that it could attract a lot of his fans. I must point out, though, that as popular as Gustav Klimt is these days (ever been in a female art student's dorm/apartment?), his recent biopic has not been a big success. So, Lionsgate has to do a good job of getting people in seats for Cottage, particularly if they hope for there to be audiences for its two sequels (which paintings will be used for those titles?).