It’s a triple feature for Johansson

By Borys Kit and Tatiana Siegel

The Hollywood Reporter

Aug 17, 2007

Scarlett Johansson (Getty Images photo)

Scarlett Johansson has lined up a series of roles that will see her moving quickly from modern relationships to comic strip noir to costume drama.

Johansson has 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 movie of interconnecting story arcs dealing with the challenges of reading or misreading human behavior.

Ken Kwapis is directing the movie, which Barrymore and Nancy Juvonen are producing via their Flower Films banner. Production executives Michele Weiss and Michael Disco are overseeing for New Line.

For “Spirit,” Miller’s adaptation of the classic Eisner film noir comic strip series, Johansson is in final negotiations to play a dangerous beauty named Silken 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.

Odd Lot Entertainment and Lionsgate are production partners on “Spirit,” with Lionsgate holding domestic and U.K. rights. Deborah Del Prete and Gigi Pritzker will produce along with Michael Uslan of Batfilm Productions Inc. Batfilm co-founder Benjamin Melniker and Steve Maier are executive producers. Odd Lot’s Linda McDonough and Batfilm’s F.J. DeSanto serve as co-producers.

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