Logan Lerman and Max Thieriot cast in major projects

Some cool casting news for a couple of up-and-coming young indie actors.

"Logan Lerman will star as the title character in Percy Jackson, Fox 2000's Christopher Columbus-directed adaptation of Rick Riordan's children's novel series," writes Borys Kit in The Hollywood Reporter. "The story, adapting the first book The Lightning Thief, follows Greek god Poseidon's 12-year-old half-human son, Percy, on a fantastic quest across modern America to save his mother, return Zeus' stolen lightning bolt and prevent a deadly war among the gods."

Percy Jackson could be a potential franchise for Fox 2000, assuring Lerman a pretty steady flow of work in the years to come. How the 17-year-old will portray a boy of 12 is anybody's guess. Lerman recently starred as Jim Carrey's son in The Number 23, Christian Bale's son in 3:10 to Yuma, and as "The Kid" in Bill, an overlooked comedy starring Aaron Eckhart which I saw at Toronto in 2007. He will next be seen with Renee Zellweger as the young George Hamilton in My One and Only, which debuted at the Berlin Film Festival last month, where it was nominated for the Golden Bear and won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury in the Special Mention Competition.

The Hollywood Reporter also says that "Max Thieriot has been cast in Chloe, Atom Egoyan's remake of the French thriller Nathalie ... being produced by Montecito and Studio Canal. The project centers on a married woman (Julianne Moore) who hires a prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) to find out whether her husband (Liam Neeson) is cheating on her. The prostitute, however, cons her about the nature of her husband's fidelity, a move that puts the family in jeopardy. Thieriot plays Neeson and Moore's son."

By the way I think Thieriot is quite lucky to be working with Mr. Egoyan. He is a brilliant director. I saw 25 films at last year's Toronto International Film Festival and chose his film Adoration as my #1 Top Pick. It then made my list of 10 Top Picks of the Year (out of 150 films I saw).