Fox Searchlight top brass announced on Tuesday [29] that shooting has begun on Black Nativity. Separately, Dimension Films has cast Eva Green in Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, which Aldamisa International is selling outside North America.

Searchlight’s holiday musical Black Nativity commenced shooting in New York on Jan 29. Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson and Tyrese Gibson star.

Kasi Lemmons directs from her screenplay based on the play of the same name written by Langston Hughes.

William Horberg’s Wonderful Films and Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray’s [pictured] Maven Pictures are producing and Searchlight is the financier and will market and release worldwide

Black Nativity follows a teenager from a broken home in Baltimore who is sent to spend the Christmas holidays with his estranged relatives and resolves to return home to his mother.

Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller are jointly directing the Sin City sequel and production is underway at Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas.

Green will play Ava Lord, a character from Miller’s graphic novel whom the writer-director described as “every man’s most glorious dreams come true, she’s also every man’s darkest nightmares [sic].”

Dimension Films will release the Quick Draw Productions, Aldamisa, AR Films, Miramax and Solipsist crime noir in North America on Oct 4.