Here's a bit of irony for you. 22 year old Gossip Girl actress Blake Lively, who was cast this week for the competitively sought after love interest role in Warner Bros' Green Lantern, is said to have beat Jennifer Garner in the hiring stages, supposedly because of Lively's work on BenAffleck's crime drama The Town, which is now in post. Affleck of course, is Garner's husband. The Hollywood Reporter say;
Advertisement
Lively will play Carol Ferris, who runs her father's aerospace company and hires cocky test pilot Hal Jordan (Reynolds), who later becomes the intergalactic policeman Green Lantern. In the comics, the romance became complicated when an alien race bestowed her the power of a crystal called the Star Sapphire.
Ferris in the comics, most recently looked like this. One wonders if she'll die her hair or WB will stick with blonde; In Affleck's movie, Lively is said to play the love interest of a criminal and it's that part which has won the fairly inexperienced actress the role, even though at 22 she's a good number of years younger than what WB originally desired. She beat out Garner, Eva Green, Diane Kruger and Keri Russell who were all in the running. Working off the Hollywood ladder, she is the last of that bunch you would have expected to nab the role and well, I must admit to having a bit of panic in securing a photo for this article, as typing Blake Lively into google - brings up the results of an IT girl - a teen idol, gossip mag favourite. I say that statement above, partly of course because I don't know her and I'm more familiar with the work of the other actresses' and after seeing what casting older did with Gwyneth Paltrow and Iron Man - I was hoping WB would stick to the same trend. But we'll see. Unknowns for comic book movie roles works great when it works. Brandon Routh as Superman is a great example of that. Green Lantern shoots in just 10 weeks time beginning in Louisiana, with a projected June 2011 release. We should find out who's play Sinistro soon (I liked the rumor of Jackie Earle Haley) and the rest of the supporting cast very, very, very soon indeed. Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, Mask of Zorro) directs from a script with four different writers attached, and a further one currently re-writing.