Scarlett Johansson is in final negotiations to star alongside Matt Damon in We Bought A Zoo, the Cameron Crowe-directed adaptation of the Benjamin Mee memoir for 20th Century Fox about an American who moves to England to operate a zoo. Deadline reported on Monday that Johansson had the inside track on the role, but she and the studio were apart on money. Fox was also talking to Amy Adams, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rachel McAdams. Crowe and Aline Brosh McKenna wrote the script. Johansson has been on the short list for several plum parts recently. She is in contention to play Daisy Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, along with several other actresses. Lionsgate also wanted her for Pride, Prejudice and Zombies, but that now appears in doubt.

souce: deadline

Scarlett Johansson is set to star in Jonathan Glazer’s sci-fi pic “Under the Skin.” Glen Basner’s FilmNation is launching the film at the American Film Market, which gets underway today.

PIc is based on Michel Faber’s tome, published by Canongate. Glazer (“Birth,” “Sexy Beast”) penned the adapted script with Walter Campbell, and is set to begin production in late spring 2011.

Nick Wechsler and James Wilson are producing. Film4′s Tessa Ross is exec producing, while Tanya Seghatchian is shepherding for the U.K. Film Council with assistance from Scottish Screen.

Storyline revolves around an alien disguised as a mesmerizing woman who snares human prey on remote highways and other desolate spots with her voracious sexuality. But over time, she begins to change her thinking about humans and finds herself on a collision course with her own kind.

“We’re so very excited to be working on this arrestingly original movie,” Basner said. “How could we pass up the chance to work with a visionary director like Jonathan, especially when combined with the intriguing notion of Scarlett Johansson as a ruthless alien seductress?”

source: Variety

Well, I just got a mail from Scarlett’s publicist turning down all this rumors, Scarlett won’t be part of any of those movies. It’s a shame, but well, I hope our girl finds something exciting to do soon because you shall agree with me, we all would love to see her working on another movie. For now… it’s time to wait!

Last we heard (early last year), Diablo Cody was producing and Geoff Latulippe was scripting the adaptation of S.G. Browne’s Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament. That script is now in, and it’s out to directors. Moreover, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Scarlett Johansson are “loosely” attached, according to the Hollywood Cog.

The movie is a romantic comedy about Andy, a dead man who discovers himself newly re-animated as a mid-aged, decaying zombie who must figure out what it means to live as an Un-dead in a society that denies his kind basic rights.

source: pajiba

David O. Russell’s next movie is coming together fast — thanks to the imminent commitment of Scarlett Johansson to star alongside its producer and leading man, Vince Vaughn. Vulture hears that Vaughn’s Wild West Picture Show production company has landed Johansson to star in Old St. Louis, a Paper Moon–esque road movie about a divorced traveling toy salesman who reconnects with his teen daughter after years on the road. Johansson would play Vaughn’s paramour, a secretary who accompanies them on their cross-country sales jaunt.

Insiders tell Vulture that the project had been around for years — earlier in the decade, it was called Toy Men and set up for Sony’s Columbia Pictures, with a script alternately worked on by Steve Pink (the screenwriter of movies like Gross Pointe Blank and High Fidelity and, more recently, the director of Hot Tub Time Machine) and Allen Loeb (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps). But now that it’s been so thoroughly rewritten by Russell, it bears only his name — and a new title.

Creative Artists Agency, which reps both Johansson and Vaughn, is in the midst of raising the financing for the $20 million indie project, but we hear it’s already closing in on a deal with Universal Pictures to distribute the drama, which is expected to start shooting this October.

source: NYmag

Ryan Reynolds has signed on as narrator and exec producer of “The Whale,” a docu about a wild killer whale that causes upheaval in a small town when he tries to befriend human beings.

Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit directed the film, produced by Mountainside Films. Reynolds signed on to the project because he had a personal connection to the film, which was set near his hometown of Vancouver, B.C.

“The Whale” is the true story of a baby killer whale, nicknamed Luna, who gets separated from his family on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island. As rambunctious and surprising as a visitor from another planet, Luna endears himself to humans with his determination to make friends, which leads to laughter, conflict and unexpected consequences.

Scarlett Johansson and Eric Desatnik are also exec producing and Desatnik’s handling U.S. sales of the film. World sales are by PBS Intl.

source: Variety

When rumors hit the Web that the Kurt Cobain biopic had found its leads in Robert Pattinson and Scarlett Johansson, the idea that Pattinson would portray the indie rocker was quickly dismissed. But fans shouldn’t give up on the prospect of Johansson playing the Hole frontwoman, because she hasn’t ruled it out just yet.

“I know that there is a script. That’s as much as I know about it,” she told MTV News while promoting “Iron Man 2.” “I’m a big fan of Courtney’s, and I think she’s very, very talented. But I don’t know anything about the project.”

Johansson — who released an album with Pete Yorn last year and also an album of Tom Waits covers in 2008 — said that despite her musical chops, playing the female rocker would be a different sort of role for her. “It would be a challenge, definitely would be a challenge,” she said. “I think the idea is interesting and intriguing, but I would have to really wrap my head around it.”Recently, Love’s manager, Jonathan Daniel, told Spin that Courtney wouldn’t mind seeing the ingénue play her on the big screen. He also confirmed that the RPattz casting rumors were just that: rumors. “Courtney likes Scarlett Johansson as an actress and as a person, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she wanted her to play her,” Daniel told the magazine. “I’m not sure she knows who RPattz is, but he sure is cute.”

Source

Johansson, who recently wrapped production on Iron Man 2, makes her Rialto debut in the role. Schreiber was last on Broadway in the 2007 revival of Talk Radio and won a Tony for Glengarry Glen Ross in 2005.

Gregory Mosher, the director and producer who is also the director of the Arts Initiative at Columbia U., helms. His most recent Broadway directing credit was a 1992 staging of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin.

View is produced by Stuart Thompson (Exit the King, God of Carnage) and the Araca Group (Wicked), along with Jeffrey Finn (Oleanna), Sonia Friedman (The Norman Conquests), the Weinstein Co. and Olympus Theatricals.

Plot centers on a Brooklyn longshoreman (Schreiber) who becomes romantically obsessed with his orphaned niece (Johansson). View bowed as a one-act verse play in 1955 before it was revised into a two-act prose drama, last seen on the Main Stem in a 1997 revival that starred Anthony LaPaglia.

Design team of the latest production includes John Lee Beatty (sets), Jane Greenwood (costumes), Peter Kaczorowski (lights) and Scott Lehrer (sound). Further casting remains to be announced.

View joins a Broadway season already heavy on starry fare, including the Daniel Craig-Hugh Jackman-toplined A Steady Rain, Jude Law starrer Hamlet and the upcoming revival of A Little Night Music featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Play is skedded for a 14-week run that begins previews Dec. 28 before it opens Jan. 24.

Source: Variety

“The Bride of Frankenstein will be young this time. They’re looking for a person with great power and sex appeal. Someone along the lines of Scarlett Johansson or Anne Hathaway.”
The wild-haired bride was originally played by English actress Elsa Lanchester.
The film follows on from ‘Frankenstein’ – which sees Dr. Frankenstein bring a ‘human’ to life from separate body parts – and sees the doctor create a partner for the monster.

Source

Presenter Fearne Cotton is to shadow four famous women, including Scarlett Johansson and Paris Hilton, for a new ITV2 series in which she will attempt to find out what makes them tick.

The four part series, Fearne and…, which will also feature Alesha Dixon and Peaches Geldof, will see Cotton follow the stars at work and play through their daily lives as well as meeting their friends and families.

Not sure how I feel about this. If it’s done well (more like a documentary), I will probably watch it. What do you all think?