In the wake of strong positive reviews of her work in Darren Aronofski’s Black Swan which premiered at the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals this past week, Natalie Portman has reportedly been offered the lead role in director Alfonso Cuaron’s science-fiction thriller Gravity.
Initially, the project was set up at Universal Studios with Angelia Jolie attached, but after the studio put the project in turnaround, Jolie departed. Even after the film landed at Warner Brothers, Cuaron could not entice Jolie back.
Although she had met with producers and Cuaron about the project before, Portman landed the offer without even taking a screentest. Previously, Cuaron had met with and/or screen tested a number of actresses for the role including Sandra Bullock, Blake Lively, Marion Cotillard, Abbie Cornish, Sienna Miller, Carey Mulligan, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Olivia Wilde and Naomi Watts.
According to the Hollywood Reporter‘s Risky Business blog, the offer and the latest draft of the script have been sent out to Portman, who should giver her decision shortly.
Portman will play an astronaut stranded on a space shuttle after some debris strike it, killing the rest of the crew. Her only chance of survival is donning a spacesuit and heading towards the International Space Station, hopping from satellite to pieces of space debris along the way. The character will spend a majority of the film’s runtime on screen alone, so the movie will sit very squarely and heavily on whomever takes the role.
Robert Downey Jr is already signed for a short role on the film, which is scheduled to go before cameras in January.
