The First Star Wars Spinoff May Focus On This Actress, Not Tatiana Maslany
This article is more than 2 years old
Hey, remember the other day when everyone was reporting that Tatiana Maslany, the uber-talented star of BBC America’s clone drama Orphan Black, was going to be the female lead in Gareth Edwards’ upcoming standalone Star Wars spinoff? Well that might not be as written in stone, or, you know, as correct, as people thought, and it’s now being reported that instead of Maslany, Felicity Jones won the role.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jones beat out Maslany and Kate and Rooney Mara, as well as a variety of other actresses who weren’t named in reports ahead of time, for the undisclosed part. She is reportedly officially in talks with Lucasfilm for the film and they suspect to hear more soon.
Jones is currently riding high on the wave of a well deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her portrayal of Jane Hawking in the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything. She also had a small role in last year’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2. She was expected to become Black Cat if that franchise continues, though it seems to be in trouble over at Sony and it’s future is in doubt.
Who Jones will play in this upcoming Star Wars movie is still up in the air, as is just about everything with this movie since we don’t really know what the hell it’s even going to be about. The report does add that either Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul or Edgar Ramirez (who plays Bodhi in the new Point Break remake) could play the male lead, but as we all know, Star Wars news is a fluid affair. Lucasfilm has been staging a series of “hush hush” readings and auditions, as usual playing things close to the vest. Disney, of course, had no comment.
Gary Whitta recently left the production for other films after delivering his draft of the script. Though it was rumored that Simon Kinberg might take over those duties, it was recently announced that About a Boy scribe Chris Weitz will be the one adding this title to his resume.
At this point we’ve heard a crazy amount of rumors about the plot of the first of these standalone movies (Fantastic Four’s Josh Trank will helm the second in a couple of years). The most consistent reports say that the story revolves around a group of bounty hunters and a heist, possibly of the plans for the first Death Star that the Rebel Alliance use in A New Hope. There have also been rumblings that Han Solo could be involved in some unknown way, that it could involve someone or something from The Force Awakens (possibly Hutts), and more.
Right now, who knows if any or all of these are actually true, and we’ll have to wait until December 16, 2016 to find out for sure. Basically, the whole point is that we don’t know a damn thing, except that apparently Jones, not Maslany, will be the female lead. At least until something else happens.
