Ah, scheduling conflicts. Those pesky little things that often stop actors from taking on potentially great projects. That’s the case with Collateral Beauty, a new drama that’s said to be one of the hottest projects around in Hollywood at the moment.
Hugh Jackman was originally attached to star in the film opposite Rooney Mara and Jason Segel but due to conflicts with other projects, he is unable to shoot it this year as strictly planned; it could be conflicted either with X-Men: Apocalypse or with musical biopic The Greatest Showman on Earth in which he is playing P.T. Barnum. Deadline is reporting that producers are now looking to nab Johnny Depp to replace Jackman in the lead – not a bad trade!
The evidently great script for Collateral Beauty, written by Allan Loeb (Rock of Ages, The Dilemma) was bought for a whopping $2.5 million by PalmStar Media and Likely Story. The plot centres on, “a New York advertising executive who experiences a deep personal tragedy. When his colleagues devise an unconventional plan to break him out of his depression, the plan works, but not in a way that anyone imagined.”
It will be the second directorial effort from Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who made a splash at Sundance this year with Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. It’s still a long way away from Depp signing on that dotted line as, as you can imagine, he’s a busy guy, too, not least filming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. But one wonders what the central character here is like if Jackman could easily replace Depp.
Source: Deadline