EXCLUSIVE: CBS Films has set Ari Sandel to direct Preconception, a comedy about a mid-30s couple who resolve to cut loose and tick off items on a pre-parenthood bucket list before getting tied down by a baby. Donald De Line is producing. It was scripted by tyro scribes Jake Morse and Scott Wolman, who sold it as a…

UPDATE, MONDAY 3-DAY ACTUALS: Fifty Shades of Grey recorded a second weekend in B.O. actuals of $22.26M, 4% off from its projected FSS estimate yesterday.  That lower figure for the E.L. James BDSM story is now 74% down from its opening weekend with a 10-day running stateside total of $129.16M. As Nancy Tartaglione…

CBS Films will cede its wide-release distribution operations to Lionsgate beginning in 2015 as part of a multiyear output agreement the two companies unveiled this morning. The deal kicks in with CBS Films’ teen comedy The Duff that is due out early next year. After that pic, Lionsgate will also take over…

Refresh for latest…  The Orchard is partnering with Unison Films and Funny or Die on the U.S. distribution of What We Do In The Shadows, a mockumentary/comedy written, directed by, and starring Jemaine Clement (Flight Of The Conchords, Men In Black 3) . The Orchard has secured U.S. digital, DVD and broadcast…

EXCLUSIVE: CBS Films has added Allison Janney and Romany Malco to join Mae Whitman, Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne, Bianca Santos, Skyler Samuels, Nick Eversman and Ken Jeong in The Duff, an adaptation of the Kody Keplinger novel that Ari Sandel will direct from a script by Josh Cagan. McG, Mary Viola, and Susan Cartsonis…

Will Yun Lee (Red Dawn, Total Recall, The Wolverine) has locked a role in New Line, WB, and Village Roadshow’s disaster pic San Andreas. Lee will play Dr. Kim Chung, the co-director of the Cal-Tech Seismology Lab in the film about an ex-Special Ops firefighter (Dwayne Johnson) scouring Northern California for his…

Parenthood‘s Mae Whitman is in negotiations to lead CBS Films comedy The DUFF, adapted from Kody Keplinger’s coming-of-age novel. She’ll star as Bianca, a 17-year-old girl who deals with the ignominy of being labeled the “designated ugly fat friend” of her social group by leading her fellow DUFFs in a scheme to…