Welcome to Casting Call! We’re here to report on some of the most notable, unusual, and exciting casting news in the business. This week we have big news on Zac Efron, Lared Leto, Mark Wahlberg and more. So, let’s grab a fork and dig in:

Movies:

Move over Shia LeBeouf, because Mark Wahlberg will be taking the lead in “Transformers 4.” Michael Bay worked with Marky Mark in “Pain and Gain” (Due out April 2013) and couldn’t be more excited to work with the actor again. Bay hopes that Wahlberg will “reinvigorate” the franchise and get fans pumped about Transformers once again.

An Australian film production company called Tree is assembling a stellar female ensemble for their new movie “33 Liberty Lane.” The flick will star Emily Watson, Sandra Oh, Melora Hardin, and Nia Vardalos as four women who decide to try their hands as phone sex operators (we’re going to assume this one is set in the Nineties). To make their roles more authentic, the women enlist some help from a real-life hooker (a roles that is currently still uncast).

Chloe Moretz, Tim Robbins, and Michelle Pfieffer will play a flailing family in Robbins’ first directorial effort in more than a decade. “Man Under” will return the underrated talent behind “Bob Roberts,” “Cradle Will Rock” “Dead Man Walking” to the director’s chair, this time following the lives of a family thrust into fame after their photographs wind up in an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Arts in New York.

Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche have signed on as leads in the new romantic drama “Words and Pictures.” Owen and Binoche will play New England teachers from very different backgrounds who find each other at a prep school.

Jared Leto is joining “Dallas Buyers Club,” aka “The Movie That Has Made Matthew McConaughey Lose Way Too Much Weight.” This will be Leto’s first movie role in six years, following a self-imposed Hollywood exile while after he was focusing on his band “30 Seconds to Mars.” Leto will play a cross-dressing gay man who is a fellow AIDS patient with Matthew McConaughey. It will be interesting to see if Leto, last seen pulling an opposite-McConaughey and gaining a ton of weight for the deservedly-forgotten film “Chapter 27,” will follow his co-star’s lead and once again alter his appearance dramatically.

Anytime we have the opportunity to write the name Imogen Poots, it brings a smile to our faces. So, it is with great pleasure that we announce Poots will be playing Zac Efron’s love interest in the upcoming film “Are We Officially Dating?” The script centers on three New York bachelors who pledge to stay single, just as they all begin to fall in love. Poots will play one of the women whose affections are targeted, alongside “True Blood” star Deborah Ann Woll.

Television:

Coming off “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” Benjamin Walker has been cast in a new Cold War-based HBO dramatic series entitled “The Missionary,” based on a book by Malcolm Gladwell, produced by Steven Levinson and…since this is HBO, after all…Mark Wahlberg (does he own that channel by now?). Walker will play a Mormon missionary who questions his loyalty after helping a young woman escaping East Berlin. Walker beat out “Breaking Bad” star Aaron Paul for the title role – which actually seems like it would be a very difficult thing to do.