Jolie Defies "Gravity" Yet Again, Cuaron Film Now Floating in Space - NBC 10 Philadelphia
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    Last time we checked, Blake Lively and Scarlett Johansson were duking it out for the lead in director Alfonso Cuaron's upcoming space thriller, with co-star Robert Downey Jr. But a late push to get Angelina Jolie on board has failed, putting the film in jeopardy.

    Jolie turned down the role in "Gravity," about a woman attempting to make her way back to her child on Earth after a satellite crash sets off a chain reaction of further crashes, ages ago. 

    This sent Cuaron on a quest that led him to consider pretty much every woman in Hollywood hot and/or famous enough to open an $80 million film set in outer space: Sandra Bullock, Natalie Portman, Marion Cotillard, Naomi Watts, Carey Mulligan, Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, Abbie Cornish, Rebecca Hall, Olivia Wilde, Blake Lively...

    Eventually they whittled the field down to Lively and ScarJo, but then Warner Bros. got a panicky at the thought of having an unproven box-office attraction on screen for virtually the entirety of a 2-hour plus film with a 20-minute opening shot set in zero-gravity that will be 60% CGI. So they made a late push for Jolie, who said "No" yet again, reported Deadline.


    [NATL] "Salt"
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    Now Warners is reconsidering the whole thing. Which is too bad, because Cuaron's a proven visionary, Robert Downey Jr has a small role, but is a proven draw and the story sounds great.

    And in a world where someone's willing to put up $200 million to have Rihanna star in a movie based on the board game "Battleship," spending $80 million to send Blake Lively floating through space for two hours seems ike a perfectly reasonable gamble.

    While the studio tries s to sort out this miss, you can catch Jolie in "Salt," which wasn't half bad, or catch Lively in "The Town," out Sept. 17.