Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte joining Jason Statham in Parker

Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte will join Jason Statham in noir thriller Parker , which boasts Taylor Hackford as its director.

The Stath's casting was announced back in April; he'll play the title character in the movie which is adapted from Donald Westlake's series of novels.

Lopez is launching something of a comeback at the moment. Her last movie, The Back-up Plan , was a critically loathed disaster, but she's recently had another wave of chart success, bolstered by her presenting job on American Idol .

Her best ever movie work was in slick thriller Out Of Sight , and it sounds like she could be moving back towards that genre with Parker .

Lopez is hedging her bets though, with appearances in starry pregnancy-com What To Expect When You're Expecting and Ice Age 4 also a part of her comeback plan.

Nolte has starred in a wealth of superb movies over the years, but it has been several years since he did anything essential, limiting himself mostly to voice roles and supporting spots, though he is starring with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton in the upcoming Warrior .

His craggy visage should fit the noir tone perfectly though, and a gravelly voice-off between him and Statham would be something to behold.

Westlake wrote plenty of Parker novels, so this could turn into a franchise for Statham.

Parker is currently shooting, with a 2012 release earmarked.

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.