Scarlett Johansson has lined up a series of roles, says The Hollywood Reporter.
She’s joined the all-star cast of New Line Cinema’s ensemble comedy He’s Just Not That Into You, which she will shoot first before then materializing as a femme fatale in Will Eisner’s The Spirit, being directed by Frank Miller for Odd Lot Entertainment and Lionsgate.
In the winter, she will don a crown for Mary Queen of Scots, to which she’s has been attached to some time. Johansson becomes the latest actor to book back-to-back-to-back roles in anticipation of a possible strike.
In “Into You,” Johansson will play a pilates instructor/aspiring singer who has an affair with a married man and hopes that he will leave his wife for her. She joins the already cast Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Connolly, Justin Long, Ginnifer Goodwin and Drew Barrymore in the Ken Kwapis-directed film.
For “Spirit,” Miller’s adaptation of the classic Eisner film noir comic strip series, Johansson is in final talks to play a dangerous beauty named Silk N. Floss. Eisner’s strip was known for its women with dangerous curves, and Miller is intent on keeping that tradition. Floss is a sexy and intelligent secretary with a vindictive instinct that makes her the perfect accomplice to the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), an evil mastermind.
Gabriel Macht is playing the title character, a detective who fakes his own death in order to fight crime in Central City as the masked man known as the Spirit. Production is scheduled to start in October, with the film scheduled to be released in 2009.
The long-in-development “Scots” has been reinvigorated by the infusion of new director John Curran (The Painted Veil). The period indie, a love story based on the early life of the legendary queen (Johansson) that focuses on her relationship with the Earl of Bothwell and her rivalry with her half-brother James, is scheduled to go before cameras in March in the U.K.
