Americas Briefs: 'The Bachelors' cast bulks up

Josh Wiggins and Odeya Rush have joined J.K. Simmons and Julie Delpy on ensemble feature The Bachelors. Principal photography is set to being on March 14 in Los Angeles.

Kurt Voelker directs the comedy-drama and Windowseat Entertainment is fully financing. Fortitude International handles sales outside the US and The Gersh Agency and CAA represent North American rights. 

• Tyler Perry’s 34th Street Films is in development on The Year Of The Great Storm, with Doug Liman and George C. Wolfe on board as executive producers. Karzan Kader will direct the story of Amy Biehl, an American Fulbright scholar whose death in South Africa during the Apartheid years prompted her parents to move to the country in an effort to bring about change. WME is packaging the project.
• Spanish star Paco Leon and writer-director Daniel Guzman will be among the attractions at the Semana Del Cine Español, a showcase of Spanish cinema organised by Wiesner Distribution in association with the Miami International Film Festival and set to run in Puerto Rico from March 10-16. Selections include Leon in We Are Pregnant (Embarazados), The Olive Tree, Guzman’s Nothing In Return (A Cambio de Nada), Truman, and The Bride (La Novia).
• FilmNation Entertainment has optioned psychological thriller The Quality Of Silence, Rosamund Lupton’s new thriller about a woman who tries to find her missing husband in an Alaskan winter with the help of her deaf daughter. Sylvie Rabineau at RWSG represented film rights and negotiated the deal with co-agent Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown UK.
• Screen International Star Of Tomorrow 2013 JJ Feild and Thora Birch have joined The Etruscan Smile starring Brian Cox and Rosanna Arquette. Oded Binnun and Mihal Brezis (Aya) will direct from a script by Michael McGowan, Michal Lali Kagan, and Sarah Bellwood based on Jose Luis Sampedro’s Spanish novelLa Sonrisa Etrusca about an ailing man who reconnects with his estranged son. Arthur Cohn is producing via his Arthur Cohn Production label. Shooting is underway in San Francisco and will continue in Scotland.
• The Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship announced this week that Eileen Meyer is the recipient of its sixth annual fellowship in memory of the film editor of The Fog Of War, among other films, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident in 2010. Meyer will receive the fellowship on March 15 in SXSW.
• Hot Docs top brass have unveiled the 19 projects at the Hot Docs Forum on May 3. Hot Docs will run from April 28-May 8. For further details click here.
• Netflix will premiere Joe Berlinger’s documentary Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru exclusively to members worldwide on July 15.