Well, this makes up for the underwhelming BJ Novak casting news: as has been rumored for some time, Brad Pitt has signed on to star in Inglorious Bastards. He'll be Aldo Raines, the Tennessee hillbilly who leads a group of Jewish soldiers to disrupt the premiere of Goebbels' latest propaganda film and collect a hundred Nazi scalps (each) on the way.

Pitt anchors the cast in a way that the stranger decisions (Eli Roth, Novak) don't quite matter as much anymore. In fact they become intriguing in this light, as opposed to puzzling. There are still five or six more Basterds to cast, as well as the female lead Shoshanna and the Nazi villain, so it'll be interesting to see if Pitt ends up as the sole 'movie star' in the cast or if his inclusion suddenly knocks this thing up a notch at the agencies (although considering how brilliantly odd the script is fuck anybody who needed a movie star to get their client interested).

Inglorious Bastards starts shooting in October in Germany.