Last weekend, Elizabeth attended a pre-Emmy Awards party… I have added 30 photos of Elizabeth at the event – you can view them by clicking on the thumbnails below!

Actress Elizabeth Banks and her husband Max Handelman didn’t get into producing to create better roles for the “40-Year-Old Virgin” star, but in a strange way, that’s exactly what happened.

According to Handelman, a former investment banker who spent his 20s working for Solomon Smith Barney and News Corp., “It was very important at the outset to establish our credibility as producers who could find material that is commercial and viable.”

Take “Surrogates,” a big-budget sci-fi thriller that stars Bruce Willis and opens Sept. 25 via Disney. Handelman (an admitted “comicbook nerd”) admired the graphic novel, so the couple started by courting its creator, Robert Venditti, who had always imagined Bruce Willis in the lead.

Then they pitched it to Mandeville’s Todd Lieberman, an old college friend from their days at the U. of Pennsylvania 17 years earlier (“Max started dating Elizabeth orientation week of our sophomore year,” Lieberman recalls).

Willis then bowed out of Oliver Stone’s Vietnam project “Pinkville” to “make our movie,” says Banks. “And Oliver subsequently had to make ‘W.’ in which I played Laura Bush, so I inadvertently created one of my favorite roles for myself.”

Since launching their Brownstone Prods. shingle two years ago, the couple have set up at least four more projects, including competitive a cappella comedy “Pitch Perfect” and “Expedition 6,” the true story of three astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station, both at Universal. They are also developing “America’s Most Hated Woman,” about atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair who lobbied against prayer in public schools, for Lifetime.

Only DreamWorks’ “Forever 21,” a “Working Girl”-style comedy with an ageism twist, is intended as a star vehicle for Banks, who sees producing as an extension of her craft: “I’m a trained storyteller. As an actor, we’re the last person to board the train that is a movie, but as a producer, I get to be there with the seed and watch it grow.”

P.O.V.

AGES: Banks: 35; Handelman: 36

HOME BASE: Los Angeles

INSPIRED BY: “We were impacted early on by Kennedy/ Marshall (who made “Seabiscuit” with Banks) as a husband-wife team who seem really grounded and are very respected,” Handelman says.

WEB: chooseyoursurrogate.com

Elizabeth Banks is in a new short film called “The Bridge Bash,” which also stars Paul Rudd, Justin Long and others.

The Bridge Bash is a star-studded mockumentary short due online in late December. APOLLO’s CRED had a chat with the two men behind the party puzzle piece-finding mission, Adam Moreno, the writer, producer and co-director, and Alex Mamlet, the producer and co-director. As a part of their absurdist PR plan for promoting the film, they pretended all this was real and that master disc scratcher DJ Blue who saved the ‘party’ took years to find – despite the fact that the real DJ Blue is in fact Moreno himself.

Providing necessary clout to the film is an eclectic line-up of celebrities, as indicated in the trailer, including Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Ethan Hawke, Justin Long, Billy Crudup, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage, David Wain, Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter. Additional details about the film are available at bridgebash.com.

From Appolo’s Cred

Elizabeth Banks is in final negotiations to star in “The Next Three Days” for writer-director Paul Haggis at Lionsgate.

Banks will play the lead role of Laura, a woman who is imprisoned for a murder she claims she didn’t commit, as her husband, the recently cast Russell Crowe, desperately tries to vindicate her.

The suspense drama is a remake of the 2008 French thriller “Pour Elle,” which was written and directed by Fred Cavaye.

Haggis, his Highway 61 Films partner Michael Nozik and Fidelite’s Marc Missonnier and Olivier Delbosc are producing. Lionsgate execs Alli Shearmur and Wolfgang Hammer are overseeing for the studio.

Filming is scheduled to begin next month.

Banks, who is repped by UTA and Untitled Entertainment, most recently starred in “Zach and Miri Make a Porno,” “The Uninvited” and “W.” She is currently shooting the comedy “The Details” opposite Tobey Maguire.

Banks is attached to star in and produce, through her Brownstone Prods., the comedy “Forever 21,” which is in development at DreamWorks.

From The Hollywood Reporter

Film star Elizabeth Banks (“W,” “Zack and Miri Make A Porno”) has signed on for a potentially recurring role on ABC’s critically-praised new fall sitcom, Modern Family.

Elizabeth, who previously had a recurring role on Scrubs, will be playing Sal, a character described by executive producer Christopher Lloyd as “the fag hag” friend of gay couple Mitchell and Cameron. In real life, Elizabeth is a close friend of actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Mitchell), and expressed interest in a role after falling in love with the pilot.

“Sal is their old running buddy,” says executive producer Steven Levitan. “Mitchell and Cameron decide they need a night out on the town, so they call her up.” Lloyd adds, “She’s thrilled to be back with her old friends until they start talking about their new (adopted) baby and she doesn’t want to hear about the baby, so she starts saying things like, ‘I wouldn’t mind killing the baby.’” The episode will likely air in October.

From TV Guide