If there’s one mess going around Hollywood right now, it’s the production of Jane Got A Gun, a project that had such a promising start with We Need To Talk About Kevin’s Lynne Ramsay set to direct and Natalie Portman slated to star and co-produce. Now, the project is bound to have a different final look, with a new director and now a new actor to play the villain – Bradley Cooper.

Both Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter confirmed late Friday that the Silver Linings Playbook actor will take the role once held by Jude Law.

Law left the project just after Ramsay left in March. Just a day later, producer Scott Steindorff pulled off a surprising coup, hiring Warrior director Gavin O’Connor.

Joel Edgerton (The Great Gatsby) is still attached to play Portman’s character’s ex-lover. The Western’s plot centers on a woman whose husband is being chased by his old gang. She hires a former lover to help her defend the farm.

Cooper is currently working with his SLP director David O. Russell on a project based on the FBI ABSCAM investigation in the ‘70s. The Oscar nominee is currently starring in The Place Beyond the Pines and will next be seen in The Hangover III.

While this project sounded like it was in danger at one point, it looks like the producers have saved Jane Got A Gun by hiring Cooper, an international star who will guarantee an audience. Production is already underway in New Mexico.

Source: The Celebrity Cafe

Joel Edgerton began making a name for himself with supporting appearances in the Star Wars prequels, King Arthur and Smokin’ Aces. He’s since established himself as an actor with a machismo, yet emotive, presence in such recent films as Animal Kingdom, Warrior and The Thing; similarly, he plays a SEAL squadron team leader in next week’s Zero Dark Thirty and is going to show up as brutish Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby next May.

That’s why Edgerton is a favored candidate on the shortlist for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy; though, he has fierce competition in the form of Lee Pace (who’s auditioning for the role of rugged human pilot Star-Lord this week). Meanwhile, Edgerton has entered negotiations for another film altogether: the western Jane Got a Gun.

Natalie Portman is producing and starring in Jane Got a Gun, which is expected to begin filming in early 2013; that is, after the Oscar-winner wraps her role in Thor: The Dark World, but before principal photography on Guardians gets underway (so don’t count out Edgerton for that Marvel movie just yet). The cast also includes Michael Fassbender – who is expected to make Jane before he reprises his role as Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto in X-Men: Days of Future Past – with directing duties being handled by Lynn Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin). She’ll be drawing from newcomer Brian Duffield’s script, which made the Hollywood Black List of best un-produced screenplays.

Good old-fashioned westerns are rare nowadays; the genre’s mostly been subject to subversion in recent years, be it through animation (Rango), genre mashup (Cowboys & Aliens) or pastiche (this month’s Django Unchained). Interestingly, the last successful traditional tale set on the old American frontier was the Coen Brother’s True Grit, a film that bucks convention by featuring a female protagonist (like Jane); moreover, there are western shades to next year’s historical drama Serena, which also features a young woman lead (Jennifer Lawrence, currently an Oscar-frontrunner for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook).

In other words: there’s been renewed effort to keep the western alive and relevant in our current age, giving rise to numerous projects that offer potentially innovative spins on the genre’s standard tropes; thus, the cream of the crop keep flocking to these films. Count us excited to see the results.

Source: Screen Rant.com

Black Swan star Natalie Portman is reportedly being sought for the lead role in Fox Searchlight’s Jackie, about first lady Jackie Kennedy in the period after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Our fascination with the Kennedys never seems to abate. Yet another treatment of the powerful clan seems to be in the works, and this time, the first lady may be portrayed by Natalie Portman, Deadline reports.

Fox Searchlight, which distributed Portman’s Black Swan, is reportedly wooing Portman for the starring role in Jackie, a script written by Noah Oppenheim about the immediate aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Director Darren Aronofsky, who directed Portman in Black Swan, had previously been connected to the project, as had Rachel Weisz — Aronofsky and Weisz were a couple at the time. Aronofsky dropped out of the project after the pair split, as did Weisz.

Deadline reports that Portman likes the script but her participation would depend on the director hired for the drama. It is unknown if Aronofsky would return to the project.

Weisz, at the time she was involved in the film and “thrilled” to be working with Aronofsky again , told MTV, “It’s a very beautiful script. I think it’s the four or five days after the assassination and how [Jackie] deals with the assassination and the funeral.”

She went on to explain, “It’s not a biopic. It’s about that period of time.”

Actresses who have taken on the challenge of playing Jackie Kennedy in the past include Katie Holmes, Sarah Michelle Gellar , Jeanne Tripplehorn and Blair Brown.

Source: Starpulse

At the age of 30, Natalie Portman already has a damned impressive resume of films under her belt, but aside from some guest appearances, she hasn’t done much in the TV arena. It looks like that’s going to change, because she’s helping head up a new ABC drama pilot based on the Judith Krantz novel Scruples. According to EW, Portman will executive produce the pilot alongside Tony Krantz, Judith’s son. While the actress has had EP credits on a couple of her films (No Strings Attached, The Other Woman), this is her first producing gig for TV.

First published in 1978, Scruples tells the story of a wealthy, previously overweight widower named Wilhelmina Hunnewell Winthrop, or “Billy,” who uses her deceased husband’s money to open a Beverly Hills clothing store called, well, Scruples. It was turned into a Warner Bros. miniseries starring Lindsay Wagner and Barry Bostwick back in 1980. Warners still holds the rights after all these years and will also be producing this version. Writers Bob Brush and Mel Harris are penning this new adaptation.

While the story doesn’t specifically suggest it, I can’t help but wonder if Portman might be thinking about starring in the pilot as well. Wagner was around Portman’s age when she played Billy in the miniseries, so the timing is right. The lines between traditionally “movie actors” and “TV actors” are also blurring more and more these days, thanks in part to high-profile cable dramas, so this might be an opportunity for Portman to give the boob tube a spin. Then again, given how busy she is on the big screen, I don’t know that she has time to commit to the small one.

Source: CinemaBlend.com

For a director who keeps his distance from Hollywood, Terrence Malick is certainly loading up on star power for his next two movies. A rep for Natalie Portman confirms that the Oscar winner is set to take her first post-Oscar (and post-baby) film roles in Malick’s next two projects, Lawless and Knight of Cups. (The news was first reported by Deadline.)

Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett will also pull double duty in both films, which are reportedly shooting back-to-back, while Rooney Mara and Ryan Gosling will join the troupe on Lawless. As usual for Malick’s movies, plot details for these projects are being kept totally under wraps. (Remember how nobody really knew what The Tree of Life was about before it came out? Or even after?) So your guess is as good as ours. Will Lawless be the long-awaited Lucy Lawless biopic? Is Knight of Cups a college comedy set at the World Series of Beer Pong intercut with wordless images of dinosaurs also playing beer pong? Probably not. But you never know. Hit us with your best theories in the comments.

Source: EW.com

A year ago, Natalie Portman was the hottest actress around. The “Black Swan” star was sweeping awards and earning the sine qua non of actor heat, the “Saturday Night Live” parody. She even survived an ill-timed dorky laugh.

But Portman didn’t get to indulge in the main perk that comes from winning an Oscar — booking a big, prestigious movie. Portman was five months pregnant when she accepted the golden statuette last February, and pretty much stopped working afterward so she and costar/choreographer Benjamin Millipied could have their son, Aleph, who was born in June. She hasn’t worked since. (Portman could be seen in several movies last spring — “Your Highness” and “Thor” — but she shot those before her pregnancy.)

Could Portman soon be coming out of her baby-induced hiatus? According to a person briefed on the project who was not authorized to talk about it publicly, the actress has been courted by Lana and Andy Wachowski to star in “Jupiter Ascending,” the science-fiction movie the filmmakers aim to shoot when they finish cutting their much-anticipated “Cloud Atlas.” Portman, the person said, was seriously weighing taking the part.

“Jupiter,” a Warner Bros. project whose plot details have remained tightly under wraps, would reunite Portman with the “Matrix” filmmakers after the two collaborated on the graphic-novel adaptation “V for Vendetta” back in 2006. And “Jupiter” tentatively aims to start production in the fall of 2012, which would give the actress more time with her infant if she wanted it. A representative for Portman did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

“Jupiter” wouldn’t be the first science-fiction film Portman has expressed interest in; for a time she was set to star in “Gravity,” Alfonso Cuaron’s space-traveling tale, before dropping out. (Sandra Bullock, who won the lead actress Oscar the year before Portman, wound up with the part.)

In the meantime, Portman also could be getting busy on a more starchy subject on the other side of the camera — she’s keen on making a documentary about veganism based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s book “Eating Animals,” according to items posted Wednesday. She’s also attached to “Thor 2,” but there’s no word on whether Marvel will move forward with the sequel.

Of course, the larger question is whether Portman will be able to regain the heat she had a year ago. Producers and the public often don’t bat an eye at a year at a small maternity leave. But they also have short memories — just ask Julia Roberts, who for a time slipped down the Hollywood food chain when she took time off to raise a family.

Source: LA Times Blog