John August on Shazam!: Jake Gyllenhaal Rumors are False

John August is a talented screenwriter who wrote both Charlie's Angels films (hey, somebody had to get each ass jiggle down on paper!) and is a favorite of Tim Burton, having worked on scripts for Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the massively disappointing Corpse Bride. In my opinion, August has never equaled his incredible script for 1999's Go, one of the most underappreciated films of the 90's, but the guy's got the goods. He also has an endlessly informative and always humorous screenwriting blog that should be required reading for any aspiring writer. On it, he debunks the rumor floating around the internet right now that Jake Gyllenhaal has been tapped to play Captain Marvel in Shazam! - the script August is currently working on. He does say in the entry that Gyllenhaal is likely to be one of the names mentioned for the role when the time comes, but that those discussions aren't even close to starting. We covered the Gyllenhaal rumor last week, but, it should be noted, we did not present it as fact. The direct link to August's response is here.

According to August, casting for Shazam! "has come up exactly zero times" and the project "currently has no start date, no release date, no movie whatsoever. There's just a script to be written. Which I should probably get back to." So there you have it. Don't rule Mr. Darko out, but he's nowhere near getting fitted for a codpiece just yet. Peter Segal is scheduled to direct Shazam!, which we'll more than likely see in 2008. Segal seems like an odd choice, as thus far he's only shot comedies, and mostly terrible ones (though to be fair, he does have one genuinely hilarious flick under his belt). August's directorial debut, The Nines, with Ryan Reynolds and Hope Davis, premiered to great notices at Sundance in January, and was recently picked up by GreeneStreet Films. Hopefully we can look forward to that this year.

[via IGN]