Casting Couch: Cage in Season; Bilson a Lady in Waiting

Mon., Sep. 22, 2008 8:58 AM PDT by Josh Grossberg

Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images; John Sciulli/Getty Images

Nicolas Cage is about to have a Face/Off with the supernatural.

The Hollywood A-lister has signed on to reunite with his Gone in Sixty Seconds helmer Dominic Sena for the spooky period thriller, Season of the Witch.

Per the Hollywood Reporter, Cage will play a 14th-century knight who must deliver a girl accused of being a witch and suspected of unleashing the Black Plague to an abbey of monks who plan to exorcise her of her demons.

The Oscar winner, late of Bangkok Dangerous, is keeping plenty busy.

Aside from Witch, he has several films in the pipeline, including Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Werner Herzog's just-wrapped update of the 1992 flick; Matthew Vaughn's action-comedy Kick-Ass; John Carpenter's Scared Straight; and Roman Polanski's conspiracy thriller The Ghost.

Season of the Witch starts shooting in early November in Austria and Hungary.

In other casting news:

While her stint on The O.C. didn't last beyond four seasons, Rachel Bilson is getting a taste of the eternal in Waiting for Forever. The indie romcom finds Bilson in a familiar part, playing a 25-year-old TV actress in Hollywood whose boyfriend quits his job with the idea of spending the rest of his life with her. Cameras roll in September in Salt Lake City.
William Fichtner, whose mob character tangled with the Joker in the opening sequence of The Dark Knight, will costar with ER alum Sherry Stringfield in Night and Day, a TNT drama pilot from 24 cocreator Joel Surnow. The tough-guy actor will essay the role of an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who works for a special threat-intervention task force, while Stringfield plays his wife and stay-at-home mom. No word whether this is a Prison Break spoiler alert—there are no plans for Fichtner to leave the Fox series, on which he plays FBI Agent Alexander Mahone.
Fresh off her second Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program, Kathy Griffin has signed on for a fifth season of her Bravo hit, My Life on the D-List. No word when it will air. She just completed filming on the fourth season in August.