By Katharina Urban-Oberberg LONDON (Reuters) - He may now be a doting dad marketing a range of jams and jellies, but Steve Carell's Gru character in the sequel to the animated supervillain children's comedy "Despicable Me" still longs for a little bit of the old criminal fun. Gru's redemption, in the form of his love for adopted daughters Margo, Agnes and Edith, hasn't spoiled his taste for gadgetry and plotting in "Despicable Me 2", due out next month, U.S. comedy actor Carell told Reuters Television on Wednesday. ...

By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Cooper. Susan Cooper," may be a line of dialogue heading to a theater near you. With "The Heat" hitting the big screen on June 28, director Paul Feig is ramping up development on a female spy movie titled "Susan Cooper" that he hopes will become a franchise for 20th Century Fox, TheWrap has learned. "Bridesmaids" director Feig is currently searching for a leading lady to star in "Susan Cooper," which will be a realistic comedy about a female James Bond, rather than a parody along the lines of "Get Smart" or "Johnny English. ...

By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Universal Pictures and Red Granite have rescued the Farrelly brothers' sequel "Dumb and Dumber To" out of turnaround from Warner Bros. and New Line. Red Granite will finance the $35 million comedy and handle foreign sales, while Universal will distribute in the U.S.. "Dumb and Dumber" stars Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels will return to reprise their roles as dim-witted best friends Lloyd and Harry, respectively. ...

By Steve Pond LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Filmmaking could not exist in Europe without the support of governments, veteran director Costa-Gavras told an audience at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Monday night. At the same time, the Greek director of such politically-charged films as "Missing" and the Oscar-winning "Z," said that he supports French exclusionary laws that limit the amount of American television that can be shown on the air. ...

By Tony Maglio LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Multi-hyphenate James Franco has more jobs (and hobbies) then one can count, but it's his latest piece of work that's buzzing around the web. Franco wrote a critical take about "Man of Steel" for Vice, but much of the attention on the piece is actually based on what he said about Spider-Man, not Superman. Franco, who attended the "Man of Steel" premiere incognito because he believes Henry Cavill does not like him based on their history filming "Tristan and Isolde," says he really enjoyed "Man of Steel. ...

By Tony Maglio LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Iron Man 3" broke the $400 million mark at the domestic box office on Tuesday, according to Disney. The amount was not unexpected but is still impressive, with "Man of Steel" taking most of the superhero movie buzz away over the weekend. The number means that third installment of the "Iron Man" franchise has earned $1.2 billion worldwide, making it the fifth highest-grossing film ever. In doing so, it eclipsed another Disney film, "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," now ranked sixth worldwide. To break down the math for you: That's $803. ...

By Greg Gilman LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Production on Richard LaGravenese's musical adaptation of "The Last 5 Years," starring Anna Kendrick and "Smash" star Jeremy Jordan, begins this week in New York, Lucky Monkey Pictures and Sh-K-Boom Records said Wednesday. LaGravenese("Beautiful Creatures") wrote and is directing the adaptation of Jason Robert Brown's musical of the same name, which is a deconstruction of the love affair and marriage of Cathy Hiatt (Kendrick), a struggling actress, and Jamie Wellerstein (Jordan), a rising novelist. ...

By Jeff Sneider and Greg Gilman LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Although Shailene Woodley shot scenes as Mary Jane Watson for "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," she will not be joining Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone after all, TheWrap has learned. Director Marc Webb has decided to streamline the story and introduce Mary Jane in "The Amazing Spider-Man 3." However, an individual familiar with the project has told TheWrap that Woodley will likely be busy with the sequels to her upcoming sci-fi movie "Divergent" and may not be available, so the role may have to be recast. ...

By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The sun won't come out tomorrow after all for Sandra Bullock. The actress won't be joining the cast of Sony's "Annie" reboot after a second attempt to get her in the cast fell through, according to an individual familiar with the dealmaking process. Bullock was in line to play Miss Hannigan, who runs the orphanage where Annie (Quvenzhane Wallis) and her friends live. She had initially passed on the role before coming back to the negotiating table, though her representatives at CAA were unable to strike a deal with Sony. ...

By Patricia Reaney NEW YORK (Reuters) - British actress Gemma Arterton does not need to worry about typecasting with roles ranging from a fairy tale character and literary heroines to MI6 agent Strawberry Fields in the 2008 James Bond film "Quantum of Solace." In "Unfinished Song," a comedy-drama that opens in U.S. theaters on Friday, Arterton, 27, stars as Elizabeth, a music teacher in a boys' school. She also directs a choir for seniors, which includes Marion, played by Vanessa Redgrave, and forges a special friendship with her cantankerous retired husband, played by Terence Stamp. ...

By Belinda Goldsmith LONDON (Reuters) - British actor Daniel Radcliffe won plaudits this week for a new stage role as a bullied Irish cripple that takes him a critical step further away from his days as boy wizard Harry Potter. In his third foray onto the stage in six years, Radcliffe adopts an Irish accent to play Billy, the bullied 17-year-old title character in "The Cripple of Inishmaan", a politically incorrect black comedy by Martin McDonagh. ...

By Brent Lang Jun 17 (TheWrap.com) - Leonardo DiCaprio parties like he's in ancient Rome in the new trailer for "The Wolf of Wall Street." The film marks his fifth collaboration with Martin Scorsese. This time the pair are exploring the seedy world of 1990s stock manipulation, and based on the outrageous trailer they have unearthed a cornucopia of excess and extreme behavior. Monkeys, midgets and mountains of cash all play supporting roles in the revelry. "The Wolf of Wall Street" is based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort, who ended up in jail for securities fraud and money laundering. ...

By Zorianna Kit LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - One-eyed green monster Mike Wazowski and his giant blue, furry friend James P. "Sully" Sullivan go back in time as "scaring" students in "Monsters University," as Walt Disney Co.'s Pixar Animation Studios pins its hopes for a blockbuster on the coming-of-age story. "Monsters University," a prequel to 2001 animated film "Monsters, Inc.," will be released on Friday in U.S. theaters, and director Dan Scanlon told Reuters one of the main challenges was to keep the film fresh and surprising for audiences. ...

By Jennifer Saba (Reuters) - A stunt double for Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie has sued News Corp over allegations its British newspapers hacked her phone, the first lawsuit in the United States against the company since the scandal broke two years ago. The lawsuit, filed on June 13 by professional stunt double Eunice Huthart, said reporters from News Corp's tabloids The Sun and the defunct News of the World, hacked her mobile phone while she was working for Jolie on location in Los Angeles. ...

By Ronald Grover and Chris Michaud (Reuters) - "Man of Steel," the big-budget reboot of the Superman franchise, leaped over the apocalyptic buddy comedy "This is the End," collecting a muscular $113.1 million to lead the domestic box office with the year's second-largest debut weekend and the biggest June opening ever. "Man of Steel," starring British-born Henry Cavill in the first Superman movie released in seven years, carried a hefty budget of $225 million and took in a total of $125 million through Sunday including early screenings, according to BoxOffice.com. ...

By Tim Kenneally LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Juan Antonio Bayona, director of "The Orphanage" and "The Impossible," has been tapped to direct the first two episodes of "Penny Dreadful," the Sam Mendes-produced drama series coming to Showtime. The eight-episode series, which re-teams Mendes with "Skyfall" writer John Logan - who created, wrote and is executive producing the series - is billed as "a psychosexual horror series" featuring some of literature's most iconic figures. Production on the series, which Mendes is also executive producing (as is Pippa Harris) begins in London this fall. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - British actor Jason Statham, known for playing the hard man in a list of Hollywood blockbusters, said he hoped his latest film "Hummingbird" would show a more emotional side to his acting even though the thriller is packed with violence. Statham, 45, walked the red carpet with his supermodel girlfriend Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in London's Leicester Square on Monday for the world premiere of "Hummingbird" in which he plays an ex-soldier living on the streets in London. ...

By Andrea Burzynski NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bruce Springsteen and Mick Jagger appear in the new film "Twenty Feet from Stardom," but only to shine the spotlight on the unsung backup singers who make them sound even better. Opening in New York and Los Angeles on Friday and expanding across the United States in coming weeks, the music documentary features the lives and careers of singers who have harmonized with the likes of Ray Charles, The Rolling Stones, Elton John and many more. ...

By Eric Kelsey LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Man of Steel," the latest iteration of the Superman series, lands on the big screen on Friday with the hopes that the dark, action-heavy film can revive the classic comic book superhero as a Hollywood franchise. But director Zack Snyder, who is best known for 2007 action film "300" and 2009 superhero flick "Watchmen," told Reuters that it was a delicate balance staying faithful to Superman's story without retreading earlier film and television versions. ...

By Jethro Nededog LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - While looking forward to the June 28 release of "The Heat," her new comedy with Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy is also looking back at a controversy that caused its own heat back in February. "Really? Why would someone OK that?" McCarthy told the New York Times of her first reaction after reading the review. This is the first time the actress is speaking about the review in public. ...

By Zorianna Kit LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar's latest film "I'm So Excited!" is a raunchy screwball comedy that the Oscar-winning director said marks a return to his roots as a satirist even as it delivers biting commentary on modern-day Spain. The Spanish-language movie, which opens the Los Angeles Film Festival on Thursday and will be on limited release in U.S. cinemas on June 28, follows passengers on a flight from Spain to Mexico City after their plane experiences a serious malfunction. ...

By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Directors and producers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have wrapped production on "The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden," a murder mystery documentary that features the voices of international stars such as Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Josh Radnor, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann and Gustaf Skarsgard. Described as an unusual tale of idealistic dreams gone awry set in the brutal yet alluring landscape of the Galapagos Islands, the project interweaves an unsolved 1930s murder mystery with stories of present-day Galapagos ...

By Ronald Grover LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - No one has more riding on the outcome of the summer movie season than Thomas Tull, the former investment banker-turned-head of Legendary Pictures and a producer of this weekend's heavily hyped "Man of Steel." Tull, the financier with a penchant for comic books who raised $500 million in 2004 to start Legendary Pictures, is in the midst of Hollywood's equivalent of a roadshow, visiting studios to pitch his outfit and seal what may become one of the industry's richest distribution deals, according to people with knowledge of the situation. ...

NEW YORK (AP) — James Gandolfini would have hated all this fuss.

As mobster Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini had the kind of role that reached the very heights of popular culture — a character so famous we end up quoting him, comparing real-life people to him and knowing more about him than our own friends and neighbors. Gangsters have long made for some of the most colorful and quotable characters in TV and movie history. Here are a few who top the list:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Gandolfini's lumbering, brutish mob boss with the tortured psyche will endure as one of TV's indelible characters.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Gandolfini's fans and colleagues shared reaction to his death Wednesday:

Hollywood was stunned and saddened by the death of 51-year-old "Sopranos" star James Gandolfini on Wednesday.

The death in Italy of James Gandolfini, who played Mafia boss Tony Soprano on the popular HBO show "The Sopranos," was part of an unusual convergence of mob-related news making headlines this week. Here's a look:

By Jeff Sneider LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Jason Schwartzman has joined the cast of Tim Burton's "Big Eyes," the Weinstein Company drama that stars Amy Adams as painter Margaret Keane and Christoph Waltz as her husband Walter, who took credit for his wife's work while she toiled in obscurity. Based on a true story, "Big Eyes" is being produced by Burton, Lynette Howell of Electric City Entertainment and screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who previously worked with Burton on "Ed Wood. ...