Stephen Vaughan / Paramount /Chuck Hodes / Universal Make that Edwina A. Salt.
The espionage thriller Edwin A. Salt, originally intended as a vehicle for Mission: Impossible hero Tom Cruise, is being rewritten for Angelina Jolie now that Cruise is no longer attached, Variety reports.
Jolie has not yet signed on to the pic, but she is reportedly close to a deal and changes are already under way in hopes that all will go according to plan. The Bone Collector helmer Philip Noyce will still direct, but the film, about a CIA agent who's accused of spying for the Russians, will get a new title.
Obviously.
Cruise—and several other actors—had been eyeing the project, but after Cruise fell through it was Jolie's interest that got Columbia Pictures seriously thinking about a rewrite.
And then, what with her previous success as a gun-toting badass in Mr. & Mrs. Smith ($186 million at the box office) and her latest success with kicking ass in Wanted ($132.6 million), the studio must have figured, Why not?
Jolie's next big-screen appearance will be in Clint Eastwood's Changeling, in theaters Oct. 24, but this now-untitled thriller would conceivably mark the mother of six's return to moviemaking following the birth of her twins last month.