Cinematical

Well, this is a bit of a bummer. I've been waiting, it seems like forever, to see when Jack and Diane, Bradley Rust Gray's endlessly gestating "lesbian werewolf" movie that Ellen Page was supposed to star in, would finally go into production. As I wrote waaaaaaay back in September, the film is supposed to be about:

"Jack and Diane, two teenage lesbians, meet in New York City and spend the night kissing ferociously. Diane's charming innocence quickly begins to open Jack's tough skinned heart. But, when Jack discovers that Diane is leaving the country in a week she tries to push her away. Diane must struggle to keep their love alive while hiding the secret that her newly awakened sexual desire occasionally turns her into a werewolf."

Sounds intriguing, yes? Page was attached to play Diane, with Juno co-star Olivia Thirlby slated to play Jack ... but now the film is off Page's IMDb page, and I can't find the film's official site (which is where I got the nifty bleeding nose pic back in September, when I last wrote about the project). Thirlby is still listed as playing Jack, but Page's name is nowhere to be seen? What gives?

Despite the rumors swirling the hallowed pages of IMDb that Page's handlers pulled her off the project because of the lesbian angle, I think it's more likely that at this point in her career, with scripts pouring in post-Juno, Page just decided she couldn't keep a hole in her schedule for a film that's had such a hard time getting off the ground. There certainly seems to be interest in the film around the internet, so perhaps a little lesbian-werewolf grass-roots advocating would convince someone with deep pockets that enough people would go see the film to justify making it, but it looks like it won't get made with Page at this point. Bummer.

What is on Page's schedule, you ask? Well, just last month we wrote up a Variety story that Page had been cast to play Jane Eyre, but that project's also not showing up on her IMDb listing. The only projects currently listed for her on IMDb are Michael Lander's Peacock, with Cillian Murphy and Bill Pullman (plus bonus "rumored" casting of Susan Sarandon and Josh Lucas); that one, according to its synopsis, is about a train wreck in rural Nebraska and a mystery involving a bank clerk (Murphy). Okay, that could be potentially interesting.

The other project on her IMDb listing sounds promising -- it's Drew Barrymore's big-screen directorial debut, Whip It!, about a Texas small-town beauty queen (presumably Page) who finds a happier place in a girl's roller derby group in Austin. Woo-hoo! Chicks on roller skates! Banging into each other! And probably there will be a mean, tough girl on the roller derby team who will be Page's nemesis at first, but ultimately her friend, and maybe a little love interest on the side to boot (note to Barrymore: can I suggest Teddy Geiger? Because I just saw The Rocker and he's by far the best thing about that movie ... maybe there could be a hot indie band that plays at the roller derby or something ... ).

Anyhow, that's what we have on Page at the moment: a train wreck in Nebraska, a roller derby in Austin, and (maybe) a little classic lit to balance things out. I imagine Page has plenty of other scripts being tossed her way these days, though, and the young actress has always made interesting choices about her projects, so look for more to show up on her slate in the not-too-distant future.