Diane Kruger, the German actress who’s starred in such films as Troy, National Treasure, and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, has entered into negotiations to join the cast of The Host, an adaptation of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer‘s sci-fi book of the same name.

The actress would join a cast that already includes Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones, Hanna), Max Irons (Dorian Gray, Red Riding Hood) and Jake Abel (Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, I Am Number Four).

Despite the conclusion of the cinematic adaptation of her Twilight novels, writer Stephenie Meyer isn’t going anywhere.

EW is reporting that Max Irons has been cast in the role of Jared Howe for the upcoming film based on Meyer’s novel, The Host. The film, scheduled to bow in 2013, is set to be helmed by Andrew Niccol, and already finds Saoirse Ronan in the lead role of Melanie Stryder, “a young woman who shares her body with an alien force known as Wanderer.”

The digital movie rental deal of the day over at Amazon today is Red Riding Hood, which is available for rental for only $.99.

This deal is valid only for today, Monday, September 19, 2011, until 11:59PM PST. Once you activate the rental through Amazon’s Instant Video service, you’ll have access to the movie for 48 hours. If you’re interested in purchasing the digital version, the cost is $14.99.

Also, if you’d like to own a physical copy of the movie, the Blu-ray is available for $18.99 (that’s 24% off the list price) and DVD for $10.49 (that’s 47% off the list price). Both editions are part of Amazon’s “Buy This DVD and Watch it Instantly” program “” you get the film as a FREE digital rental you can watch immediately when your purchase the physical copy.

By Comtesse de Bussy

Red Riding Hood
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
Starring Amanda Seyfried, Michael Shanks, Gary Oldman
Release date: March 11, 2011

It seems that updating classics and age-old stories has become something of a fad. Only a few years ago the film Brothers Grimm was released, and three more films, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Snow White and the Huntsman, and Brothers Grimm: Snow White, are in the works. Not to mention all of the Disney cartoons that transform the original, often dark material into a colorful, sugar-coated, happy-ending cartoon with music whose soundtracks will sell hundreds of copies. Such movies rarely retain the core of the story they tell, and instead become an excuse for an entirely different kind of tale, one that takes away from the screenwriters the necessity of coming up with an entirely original plot, characters, and setting. This seems to be the case with Red Riding Hood, a film in which the story of a young girl and a wolf are used as an excuse to create a Twilight-esque tale in which a beautiful young woman must choose between two men. And the real shame is that this could have been a good movie, but instead got stuck with a terrible plot and an atrociously ridiculous setting.