Red's defiantly no-youngsters casting continues, with the news that Richard Dreyfuss, Brian Cox and Ernest Borgnine are all in talks to join Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren in the adaptation of the Warren Ellis comic. A spring chicken by comparison, erstwhile Dr Doom Julian McMahon is also in the frame.

Yup, you read that right. The legendary Ernest Borgnine, still working at 92, will play a shady keeper of the CIA's most compromising files. Dreyfuss is a wealthy government contractor, and Cox is a former cold-war spy, and sworn enemy of Willis. McMahon's character is described by The Hollywood Reporter as "a vice president at the centre of the shadow conspiracy": maybe a henchman to Freeman's CIA director, who wants retired agent Willis rubbed out by the next generation, to prevent word of his former activities ever leaking.

So that's cast-members from Sin City, X-Men, Wanted and The Fantastic Four: a fine comic book pedigree if ever there was one, plus an original member of The Wild Bunch. The words "up", "nicely" and "shaping" spring to mind. Robert Schwenke is directing Erich and Jon Hoeber's script, and shooting starts early next year, for a projected November 2010 release.