UPDATE: Variety's Justin Kroll has just tweeted that news that Lively, like so many before her, has passed on playing Elizabeth Bennet. The loooooong search for the undead-smashing literary heroine continues.
...
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a director in posession of a good screenplay must be in want of a star. Thus it is that Twitch are reporting that Craig Gillespie has offered the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to Gossip Girl's Blake Lively.
If she signs on it'll be a choice starring role for the actress, who we last saw as Carol Ferris in Green Lantern (she may get to be Star Sapphire yet...) But it's also one that's been linked to and abandoned by a number of her peers already. First in the ring was Natalie Portman (who remains a producer), followed by Emma Stone and rumours of Scarlett Johansson and Mia Wasikowska. Did they know something Lively doesn't yet?
The presence of Lars and the Real Girl and** Fright NIght**'s Gillespie at the helm (replacing David O Russell) is reassuring, but it'll be intriguing to see what sort of film he can spin from the one-joke source novel, written by Seth Graeme-Smith (who also penned the screenplay).
If it's passed you by so far, the book was at the vanguard of pastiche literary zom-com mash-ups that briefly crazed in bookshops a couple of years ago. P&P&Z sees Elizabeth Bennet searching for love and independence as a zombie plague erupts around her and American wildlife inexplicably starts appearing in the Berkshire countryside. It was followed by the likes of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and of course, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which is also heading to a cinema near you, courtesy of Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov.
Shooting on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is pencilled in for the beginning of 2012.