Hilary Duff Gets Tough With Bonnie and Clyde

Tue., Jan. 27, 2009 8:48 AM PST by Josh Grossberg

Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images

Lizzie Maguire is going gangster.

Former Friend of Mickey Hilary Duff is set to play one-half of notorious bank-robbing duo Bonnie and Clyde in a new indie film.

Unlike the classic 1967 flick starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, the new take, titled The Story of Bonnie and Clyde, will focus less on the former's largely fictionalized shoot-'em-ups and more on the actual lives of the Depression-era bandits. Kevin Zegers (The Jane Austen Book Club, Transamerica) will play Duff's partner in crime.

Duff will shoot the flick in her downtime from her new NBC series, Barely Legal.

Meanwhile, in other action on the casting couch…

• Minnie Driver is partnering with Hilary Swank for Betty Anne Waters, based on a true story about an unemployed single mother (Swank) who, convinced her brother's been wrongly convicted, earns a law degree to try to free him. Driver plays Swank's law school friend who helps her on the case.

• Per Variety, Brendan Fraser is about to lend his mug to yet another live-action family comedy. Fury Vengeance finds the George of the Jungle thesp playing a real-estate developer whose new housing subdivision encroaches on some angry critters in the pristine Oregon wilderness. Shooting starts this summer.

• Jennifer Beals is set to costar with Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman and Mila Kunis in The Book of Eli. Helmed by Albert and Allen Hughes, the thriller follows a Mad Max-type loner who battles his way across a futuristic American wasteland to protect a book that may hold the secret to saving humankind. Beals will play Kunis' mother, a blind woman wiling to go to extremes to protect her daughter.