Down With Gravity, Up With Code Name Sasha – And Sleeping Beauty Gets Back On Her Feet?

It looks like everybody wants to be in Gravity except Angelina Jolie, and Angelina Jolie wants to be in everything except Gravity.

Having already passed on the project once, Ms. Jolie has just given Alfonso Cuaron the cold shoulder for a second time and left his sci-fi epic Gravity without a star and, very possibly, without a budget. As Deadline put it:

Beyond Jolie, which other actress do you bet on?

Other actresses to have tried out for the role include Sandra Bullock, Natalie Portman, Naomi Watts, Marion Cotillard, Carey Mulligan, Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, Abbie Cornish, Rebecca Hall, Olivia Wilde and Blake Lively (now breathe) but none of them have made Warner Bros. confident enough to turn on the green light. I vote Rebecca Hall.

I’ve covered the picture numerous times in the past, but here’s the digest. It’s a two hander set in space, one male character, one female, the male one is quickly removed from the picture, pretty much everything hangs on the female. Warner Bros. are looking to a bit of star power to make the film bankable. Are they missing the point?

Meanwhile, there’s a big list of other projects that Ms. Jolie has decided to be involved with:

• Playing Maleficent for Tim Burton in what Deadline are calling Sleeping Beauty. It was going to be called Maleficent and pull a Wicked-like reversal on the evil villainess, making her the misunderstood anti-heroine, but with this new title…? Has what was once turned on its head now been put back on its feet again?

• A Scarpetta movie that is clearly designed to launch a franchise. Airplane movies made from airport novels.

• Another Salt, obviously still in the earliest stages of development – but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it put on the fast track.

• An adaptation of the ITV show Unforgiven which starred Suranne Jones as a woman adjusting to life after jail time for a double murder. Christopher McQuarrie is writing the screenplay, which is a very good thing indeed.

• A Cleopatra picture that Brian Helgeland is writing.

• Something called Code Name Sasha that The Strangers‘ Bryan Bertino is scripting. I don’t think we’d heard a peep about this one before. I doubt very much that this is about Claude McKay, the writer and figurehead of the Harlem Renaissance, but I’d like to be pleasantly surprised.