Angelina Jolie is reportedly in talks to join Mark Wahlberg in David O. Russell‘s supposed next project (with a lame title), The Silver Linings Playbook. [The Playlist, via JustJared]
Jolie, coming off one good movie (Salt) and one lame (The Tourist) – and with her Bosnian psychodrama rape-thing The Land of Blood and Honey in post-production – is still pretty much the top female movie star, and can do whatever she wants. Supposedly, she’s in interested in the Russell project, but get a load of this synopsis:
The plot involves Pat Peoples (Wahlberg), a former high school teacher who, after being released from a four-year stint in a mental institution, moves back in with his mother; he then seeks to remake himself in the hopes of reconciling with his ex-wife.
Now, David O. Russell has proven he can somehow make just about anything work. (I was actually looking forward to his take on Uncharted, but that’s not happening.) The Fighter had a weak script and a wooden Wahlberg but was saved by the supporting performances. This plot sounds impossibly stupid and unwatchable, with no real promise of even a slightly-nude Jolie. With so many other projects on her plate – a David Fincher-directed Cleopatra, the slightly-bizarro-sounding live-action take on Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, something she’s got going about Churchill & Roosevelt, the probably inevitable Salt 2 – expect her involvement to come and go.
Still, after the non-Oscar-baiting The Tourist, she might be drawn to a whacked-out loose cannon like Russell, who has a knack for drawing good performances out his actors. Even while verbally abusing them. I’ll keep it short, but in other O.Russell-related news Mark Wahlberg (after repeatedly talking about it) spoke about a possible sequel at the Spike TV Guys’ Choice Awards after picking up Guy Movie of the Year for The Fighter:
We left out the Arturo Gatti fights for a reason, cause that’s for Fighter 2. We’re not gonna do Fighter 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, but we’re gonna do 2. We’re gonna do the Ward/Gatti trilogy.
Since he has already endlessly discussed this with no concrete plans, I’ll just let you watch the video below.
Could Jolie make it Playbook work? What do you think about a Fighter sequel?