* There's a bottle sitting on my desk full of the tears I shed when Darren Aronofsky was forced to pull out of directing The Wolverine. It remains one of the most disappointing things covered here on the site, and frankly my interest in the sequel has plummeted. But I still care a great deal about what the Black Swan helmer has up his sleeve. Along with a number of other films he's had in the works for years came the recent news that he may team with George Clooney on a sci-fi flick called Human Nature. Now we're also learning from Badass Digest that Aronofsky is being sought by Disney to take on Maleficent, the Sleeping Beauty
re-imagining that already has Angelina Jolie starring and just lost Tim Burton as director. Warner Brothers is also seeking him for Moses, a film that would follow the Biblical story of Exodus. Ugh. Please pick Maleficent. * By now everybody knows to stick around after the closing credits of any Marvel superhero flick, and frankly any big blockbuster film with sequel potential. If you hung around after Thor you saw a scene that most of us know is going to lead directly into next year's The Avengers, and have some relevance to the upcoming Captain America film. Since Kenneth Branagh director Thor, you'd think he spearheaded this scene as well, right? Wrong. It was Joss Whedon, no doubt setting the stage for The Avengers in his own way. At least according to co-star Stellan Skarsgard, who ought to know. Now who wants to bet he directs the sequence at the end of Captain America, too?
* Jennifer Lawrence(Winter's Bone
) is in some serious demand right now, and the actress is turning her Oscar success into a wealth of opportunities. With X-men: First Class and The Hunger Games
on the way, she's steering clear from the mainstream after that and jumping back into indie fare, as EW report that she'll be starring in Sissy Spacek's directorial debut, Sweet Tea. The script is penned by C. Gaby Mitchell, who recently worked with Spacek on the fantastic Get Low
. It's based on a book by Julia Oliver, and follows a poor woman in Alabama who marries young and then meets another guy, who forces her to confront the possibility that she made a mistake. Lawrence can be seen right now in another indie, The Beaver
, starring Mel Gibson.
