Focus Features has acquired screen rights to the upcoming Kevin Wignall novel To Die in Vienna, and will turn it into the Jake Gyllenhaal star vehicle Welcome to Vienna. Gyllenhaal will produce through his production company Nine Stories alongside Riva Marker. Nine Stories exec veep Annie Marter will be exec producer.

The novel will be published by Thomas & Mercer in June. The pic is contemporized, but the tone feels like a throwback to paranoid thrillers like The Conversation.

Gyllenhaal will play Freddie Makin, a civilian surveillance contractor who for the past year has been watching Jiang Cheng, a Chinese academic in Vienna. When Freddie returns home early one day with a migraine, he interrupts a break-in at his apartment. The intruder escapes, but then comes back and tries to kill him.

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An A-list trio has been assembled for a hot new package, Finest Kind.

Jake Gyllenhaal, Ansel Elgort and Zendaya will star in the crime drama from Brian Helgeland, the Oscar-winning writer-director behind Mystic River and A Knight’s Tale.

The story centers on two half-brothers, to be played by Gyllenhaal and Elgort, that are reunited as adults after being raised by different fathers. When one discovers his estranged father has only months to live, he strikes a dangerous deal with a crime syndicate, putting him and his brother on a collision course with the Boston underworld.

Gyllenhaal, who is no stranger to the crime drama genre as the star of Nightcrawler and Nocturnal Animals, will next be seen in the Annapurna Western The Sisters Brothers. He is repped by WME and Bloom Hergott.

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If someone tells you that an actor is set for The Batman, that information is false. If someone tells you that a solo Flash movie is good to go, that information is false. While it may be fun to get the scoop, accuracy counts, and right now the most accurate assessment of Warner Bros.’ plans for the DCEU is that they’re waiting to see how Justice League performs. Anything beyond that is presumptive and trying to firm up details that the studio hasn’t decided.

Earlier today, a rumor surfaced that The Batman director Matt Reeves wants Jake Gyllenhaal to play the Caped Crusader. Our Editor-in-chief Steve Weintraub did some digging, and while he confirmed that Reeves and Gyllenhaal had a meeting, Reeves has also met with a few other actors as well.

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Kate Winslet, Gal Gadot, Hugh Jackman, and Jake Gyllenhaal are just a few of the stars participating in Variety and PBS SoCal KOCE’s seventh season of the Emmy Award-winning series “Variety Studio: Actors on Actors.”

“Actors on Actors” features exclusive, one-on-one conversations with top talent from the year’s most memorable films, who are expected to contend this awards season. Clips from the interviews will be available on variety.com at the end of November and full episodes of the new season will air from Jan. 2 to Jan. 4 at 7 p.m. on PBS SoCal KOCE.

The episodes will also be available to stream on pbssocal.org. PBS stations across the country will air the show in January.

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