Is it possible that Universal’s plans to make a sequel to Mark Millar comic adaptation Wanted have been shot down by none other than Angelina Jolie? And that the reason she’s ditched the film is so that she can star in a space thriller called Gravity, co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron?
That’s the news coming out of the Vulture blog, which reports that Jolie has pulled out of Timur Bekmambetov’s follow-up, and that the studio decided, somewhat oddly, to forgo a re-write and just shut the whole thing down. Right now, it’s so much rumour: while the loss of its most bankable star is certainly a blow, we’d have thought Uni would simply order a rewrite to leave Jolie’s slinky Fox as dead as she seemed as the end of the first film.
Colour us unconvinced that Wanted 2 is completely dead until there’s an actual announcement, or Bekmambetov moves on to something else (**Moby Dick **perhaps? Although we're hoping he'll rename that one "The Whale of Fate")
But we can certainly see Jolie wanting to work with the man who made** Children Of Men** on his new, secretive project. Gravity, which boasts a script from Cuaron and his son Jonas, would see the actress handling large chunks of the running time alone as the last surviving member of a space mission trying to get home to her daughter.
Ironically, Universal had the option on the movie, before shoving it into turnaround and watching as Warners snapped it up and assigned Harry Potter producer David Heyman to oversee it. Now it looks like their reluctance to tackle Cuaron’s tough sci-fi project might just have derailed a possible future cash cow. Cinematic karma? Or wrong-headed rumour about an actress who is seemingly offered everything in town? We’ll keep you informed.