Early Edition: Will Ferrell Takes on Politics; Bryan Cranston Rocks; More

During a press conference Sunday for theWill Ferrell-starring 'Everything Must Go,' which screened last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ferrell talked about his next project, the political comedy 'Southern Rivals,' co-starring Zach Galifianakis and directed by Jay Roach ('Meet the Parents')."What's next for me specifically is that I'm shooting a film in the fall with Zach Galifianakis where we're kind of rival Southern politicians in a small congressional district in South Carolina that we'll release for the election season next year,"he said."It kind of comments on the circus that is now modern day politics."Let's keep our fingers crossed that this two physical comedians go for satire and not scatology. We could use a good black comedy about politics about now. (BTW, 'Everything Must Go' is loosely based on a Raymond Carver short story; Ferrell turns in one of his most understated and nuanced performance ever, according toThe Playlist,as an alcoholic who relapses, causing him to lose his wife, his job and his home, and forcing him to hold a yard sale on his front lawn in an attempt to start over. The film, which co-stars Michael Peña and Rebecca Hall, opens a limited run on May 13).

'Breaking Bad's'Bryan Cranstonhas joined the cast of director Adam Shankman's rock musical 'Rock of Ages.' According toThe Hollywood Reporter,Cranston will play the mayor of Los Angeles in the movie about an '80s rock club on the famous Sunset Strip. The actor joins Diego Gonzalez Boneta, Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Mary J. Blige, Paul Giamatti, Julianne Hough and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the New Line production that begins filming this month.

Robert Zemeckisis in talks with Warner Bros. to direct a sci-fi thriller project,'Replay,'based on the bestselling 1987 novel by Ken Grimwood, about a man who keeps going back in time and reliving his life over and over. According toNew York Magazine,the plot revolves around a"40-something radio journalist who dies of a heart attack in 1988 and re-awakens back in 1963, in his 18-year-old body, with the memories and accrued wisdom of the previous 25 years intact. He always dies in 1988, and then goes back to the late sixties, but each time he has the ability to make a new sets of choices, resulting in different spouses, progeny, and jobs in each 'life.'"Try as he might, he can't prevent his own death, but sets about trying to prevent the death of his daughter. The project has been floating around Hollywood for almost two decades. United Artists first bought the rights from Grimwood; the project the moved to Disney, where the studio hoped to interest Ben Affleck to direct; when Affleck decided to make the Iranian hostage crisis-based 'Argo,' the project moved to Warner Bros.

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