January Jones

Another Jason Reitman movie is getting prime awards-season placement. Paramount said the Juno and Up In The Air director’s latest, Labor Day, will open in limited release December 25 this year before expanding January 10 and going wide January 31. Tobey Maguire, Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, J.K. Simmons, James Van Der Beek, Brooke Smith, Gattlin Griffith, and Brighid Fleming star. The studio is also co-financing the pic, which Reitman also wrote as an adaptation of the Joyce Maynard novel. The story centers on a 13-year-old boy (Griffith) from New Hampshire who learns valuable life lessons over a five-day Labor Day weekend after an escaped convict (Brolin) seeks shelter with the boy’s single mom (Winslet). Mr. Mudd’s Lianne Halfon and Russ Smith are producing along with Helen Estabrook and Reitman. Indian Paintbrush is exec producing. The date obviously is chock-full of big pics including Paramount’s own Jack Ryan, Universal’s 47 Ronin, and Fox’s The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty as well as expansions for The Weinstein Company’s Grace Of Monaco and Fox Searchlight’s Twelve Years A Slave.

(Reuters) - Passengers aboard a high-speed commuter ferry that crashed while docking near Wall Street in January have filed 37 lawsuits against boat owner Seastreak LLC, seeking as much as $45 million each.