With David O Russell and Vince Vaughn moving from the flirting stage of their relationship on Russell’s new film **Old St Louis to the full-on heavy petting rush towards production, it would seem that Scarlett Johansson is looking to get in on the dramedy action.
According to Vulture, Johansson is close to signing up to the film to play a secretary who just happens to also be the lover of Vaughn’s travelling salesman character. The divorced businessman is trying to mix his latest cross-country job trip with an attempt to reconcile with the teenage daughter that he’s rarely seen thanks to his busy schedule.
The movie itself has apparently been lingering around the studios for years, with Sony setting it up a while ago as** Toy Men** with High Fidelity/**Hot Tub Time Machine’**s Steve Pink and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’ Allen Loeb on script duties. But it never quite worked out and now, with Russell having re-written it almost completely, it’s in the middle of grabbing funding and in serious talks with Universal to get it into cinemas.
Here’s the catch, though – what might this mean for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity? The space-set epic thriller has had Robert Downey Jr in its command module for a while now, but has also encountered real trouble finding a female lead. Johansson had been touted as the latest likely candidate, but if she signs on to Old St Louis, there would almost certainly be a schedule clash (unless she tries to do them both, of course).
There had been whispers, reported on by The Playlist, that Green Lantern**’s Blake Lively might be trying to grab the Gravity role, though all that could be just so much snarky chatter. After all, we're sure the media would love to imagine a competition between Ryan Reynolds actual wife and current on-screen squeeze. Still, if Johansson did jump ship from Gravity, we’re sure Cuaron wouldn’t mind having a backup.