Angelina Walks Away, 'Wanted' Sequel Dead

Rather than casting someone else in the role played by Angelina Jolie in the first comic book adaptation, struggling powerhouse Universal has decided to kill Wanted 2 instead of moving ahead. Vulture says that Jolie has backed out of the project to concentrate on a project called Gravity. More on that in moment. But in defense of Jolie, this sequel should have been at least in pre-production by now. It was one of the bigger second-tier blockbusters of2008 and almost immediately, James McAvoy and director Timur Bekmambetov said they had interest in returning. The trick was making it without Jolie (for obvious reasons if you saw the first movie). But Universal didn't want to make it without her, so her character was written back into it. Then...nothing happened. For over a year. It's still not a completed script, so far as we know, and with Jolie still in constant demand, she's moving on. So is Universal, which now has to find something else to take this film's place. Not a good situation for the least of the big five studios over the past couple of years. Here's what curious about Gravity, kind of a Cast Away in space (or maybe a female version of Moon) co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. It's set up at Warner Bros. but once upon a time, the project was in the queue for - guess who - Universal. Vulture says the film might have been too "artistically challenging" for Uni, which sounds like a backhanded compliment minus the compliment. Not only did da U lose the movie by putting it in turnaround a few weeks ago, it also lost Jolie, who was already lined up to star. Wow, Comcast really found the mother lode when it bought NBCU, didn't it? Warner Bros., which was 2009's top studio (at least until Avatar wraps up its record run), has handed the project over to Legendary Pictures, one of the best, most reliable producers of quality big-budget blockbusters. Will Wanted return? Not likely. If they couldn't put a script together when the studio was intending to make the movie, I doubt there will be any reason to finish it now.