Kidman Prepares for "Invasion"
A mysterious alien force has altered the behavior of human beings and it's up to Nicole Kidman to save the day.
Not more trouble in Tom Cruise land?
Nope, that's just the plot of her new flick, the tentatively titled Invasion.
With her ex coming off the biggest hit of his career with the remake of War of the Worlds, the Oscar-winning Kidman will play a Washington, D.C.-based psychiatrist (what would Tom say about that?) in the update of the classic sci-fi thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Whereas the original focused on the pod people, the new version will center on Kidman's shrink, who begins to suspect that a strange new epidemic is extraterrestrial in nature and must protect her son, who may hold the key to stopping an alien assault.
Invasion is being produced by Joel Silver and Vertigo Entertainment, the company behind the The Grudge, and is being directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, the German filmmaker whose Downfall, about the last days of Adolf Hitler, raked in more than $87 million worldwide last year.
Unlike Cruise's effects-heavy War of the Worlds, Kidman's Invasion will be close in tone to the creepy 1956 original.
"Invasion gives Nicole an opportunity to bring her depth and range to the kind of gritty action role that we haven't see her play before, as Oliver infuses the film with the brand of provocative, character-driven storytelling he's known for," Silver said.
Directed by Don Siegel, the first Invasion of the Body Snatchers mined Cold War fears of a potential Communist takeover. It followed a small-town doctor who finds his patients--whom he initially diagnosed as suffering from paranoid delusions--are actually being replaced by alien clones bent on taking over the Earth.
Phillip Kaufman helmed a critically acclaimed remake in 1978 that moved the setting to San Francisco and starred Donald Sutherland as one of a group of people whose friends are taken over by E.T.s devoid of emotion.
The second remake, 1993's Body Snatchers, was directed by Abel Ferrara and set the story on a military base.
We can only hope that the third remake turns out better than the previous two that Kidman starred in, last summer's disastrous The Stepford Wives and this summer's equally woeful Bewitched, neither of which endeared itself to critics or moviegoers.
And aliens aren't the only thing invading Kidman's calendar.
The statuesque beauty's teaming up with director Tony Scott for the humanitarian drama Emma's War; costarring with Jennifer Lopez in a swing musical American Darlings; headlining the romantic comedy Wedding Seasons; playing revered photographer Diane Arbus in Fur; and lending her voice to George Miller's animated penguin adventure Happy Feet.
If that wasn't enough, Kidman's also considering a possible reunion with Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann in an untitled Australian romance that described as the Down Under version of Gone with the Wind. That project would also feature Russell Crowe, with whom she was supposed to star in another Australia-based film, Eucalyptus, before that project was derailed due to script woes.
The new Invasion will begin filming in late September on location in Baltimore, New York and D.C. It is targeted for release sometime in 2006 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the original.
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