When I write up these casting bites, I can't help but wonder who might be tomorrow's next star... Maybe it will be one of these people, all courtesy of Variety:

• Garret Dillahunt seems to be on fire these days. He popped up with solid roles in two of last year's best films -- No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Topping that off, he's been the uber-creepy machine after John Connor in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Continuing his good actor fortune, he's going to star in the remake of Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left as Krug, the convict who tortures an innocent family. Production begins on that remake next month, in South Africa of all places.
  
• Really, it would be hard to improve on your first feature if its Mexican Werewolf in Texas, but Sara Erikson continues to try. After a lot of brief parts in shows from Boston Legal to Hannah Montana, the actress has nabbed a lead role in Soul Men, the Bernie Mac/Samuel L. Jackson music movie. She will play someone named Chastity, but there's no word on her role. Is she a singer? A hanger-on? A lover? Or, is she just chaste?
• Last, but certainly not least, Mousa Kraish, is continuing to build up his resume. He just wrapped You Don't Mess with the Zohan, and has had gigs in Munich, King of California, and Superbad. Now, he's signed on for the role of Yusef in 20th Century Fox's remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. The remake of the sci-fi flick about alien visitors and giant robots already stars Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly.

In a new interview at comingsoon.net, legendary horror filmmaker Wes Craven discusses The Hills Have Eyes II, which is a sequel to last year's remake of The Hills Have Eyes, but not a remake of Craven's The Hills Have Eyes II, which was a sequel to Craven's The Hills Have Eyes. which was an update of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and was recently remade without credit to Craven as Chaos. See? Who says there's no original ideas in Hollywood? Craven wrote the new Hills Have Eyes II (They still have eyes!) with his son Jonathan and it releases Friday. From the interview, it also looks like we can expect yet another remake of one of his films, this time of his debut The Last House On The Left, which itself was an update of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and was recently remade without credit to Craven as Chaos. We first heard rumblings of this way back in August, when it was eyeing an early 2007 start date.

I can still recall watching Last House as a kid, intrigued by Roger Ebert's positive review. That was the day I lost my innocence. I won't be watching it again, and I doubt I'd try to stomach a sure-to-be more extreme remake, but the plot was basically: "Teenage girls get raped, tortured and killed. Parents strike back with excessive force." The original was shot for $90,000 and funded by Boston theater owners, who wanted cheap flicks to round out double features. This remake will likely cost a bit more. In the article, Craven also mentions the rumored remakes of his People Under the Stairs and Shocker (a movie it doesn't seem humanly possible to make any worse, so more power to them). He doesn't confirm them, but he certainly doesn't rule them out either. Craven actually says in the article: "I think the biggest danger is that people just think that any kind of horror film they make will make money or that they don't have to bring the highest standards to it, which sometimes can happen." It sure can, Wes. It sure can.

It's starting to seem like Craven is going to have carbon copies of his entire filmography. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but...isn't this just getting kind of sad?