It appears Johnny Depp (Public Enemies) will replace Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation) in The Tourist.

According to “The Hollywood Reporter,” “The thriller remake ‘The Tourist’…has run into another set of hiccoughs, with major players moving around like luggage on a conveyor. Male lead Sam Worthington has fallen off, and Johnny Depp is in negotiations to replace him.”

The Tourist, which was originally a French thriller titled Anthony Zimmer and released in 2005, has been plagued with problems since the movie was announced. Original “director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has moved on, and Alfonso Cuaron is in early talks to step in. ”  It added that, “Angelina Jolie — herself a recent replacement for Charlize Theron, who was long attached to the project — remains in the lead female role.”

Anthony Zimmer “involves a female Interpol agent who ropes an everyman American tourist visiting France into becoming bait in the hunt for a wanted criminal who’s also her former lover.” Production is set for next year.

Worthington is an Australian award-winning actor and I thought he was the best thing about Terminator Salvation, but he doesn’t hold a candle to Depp’s dynamic acting.  Depp is probably a better choice for the lead role and with director Cuaron (who did the fabulous Children of Men) potentially on board, this becomes gold project, despite it being a remake of a four-year-old movie.

Yeah, I know it’s old, but things happen, okay?  Some news days are slower than others, so blanks need to be filled in.  In an overlooked bit of news from earlier in the week, the Risky Biz blog reported that Angelina Jolie appears ready to step into the role previously occupied by Charlize Theron in The Tourist. More about the film itself:

A remake of the French thriller “Anthony Zimmer” from 2005, “Tourist” centers on an American tourist who, on behalf of Interpol, goes undercover to entrap a former lover who’s a suspected global criminal. It follows in the long tradition of innocents caught up in shady activities abroad that dates back to Hitchcock (“The Man Who Knew Too Much”), Polanski (“Frantic”) and beyond, and a theme that also has contemporary echoes with “Taken” this past year.

The role calls for equal parts action and seductress, roles that either woman could certainly pull off, but Jolie having a particular background in playing such types.  This situation is likely still very fluid though as the project is currently seeking a director as well.  The Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day helmer Bharat Nalluri is apparently bouncing out along with Theron.   Couple that with the fact that we have already seen Tom Cruise leave and Sam Worthington fill in his shoes as the male lead, and we have a project in flux.  This kind of echoes what happened with State of Play‘s fluctuation in casting earlier in the year, but is by no means exclusive to a few projects, since it happens all the time.

I am not sure that Jolie is greater than Theron, having just witnessed her in a small role in The Road and a role I missed in The Burning Plain, these are equally talented actresses.  I actually like the idea of Theron going a little more the action route.  These women have had roles that parallel each other as well with Aeon Flux and Tomb Raider, but Jolie won the box office war by a large margin there.  As far as star power, Cruise/Theron is slightly greater than Jolie/Worthington at this juncture, but overall it should still be an A-list project that will attract a big name director, as long as not too many more major changes come.  Comments?  Share them.

A lot of casting announcements or near-announcements made today concern higher profile actors in higher profile projects.

Let’s start off with Ms. Carla Gugino, who you may recognize as the hot naked one from Sin City or the original Silk Spectre from Watchmen. After those two comic book films and a semi-recurring role on “Entourage,” Gugino is once again teaming up with her Watchmen director, Zack Snyder, for the female-empowered Sucker Punch. According to “The Hollywood Reporter,” the film is set in a 1950′s mental institution when a character played by Emily Browning is scheduled by her evil stepfather to be lobotomized (think the ending of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) in five days. She forms an escape plan with other female inmates. Gugino will play Mrs. Schultz, an adult figure in the institution.

Sam Worthington, he of Terminator Salvation, the upcoming Avatar and the the even further upcoming Clash of the Titans is in talks to join Charlize Theron in The Tourist, according to “Variety.” The film is based on the 2005 French thriller, Anthony Zimmer, about a female Interpol agent who uses an American tourist to expose a criminal who was once her lover. I’m assuming Theron would play the female agent and Worthington the used American.

Finally, after receiving non-critical praise for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Hugh Jackman has found his next project. He’ll play the title role in The Greatest Showman on Earth, based on the life of circus ringleader P.T. Barnum. The twist differentiating this from the typical biopic-based-on-circus-showman is it will be a musical. For those that don’t know, Jackman has been a longtime Broadway musical star, having hosted the Tony Awards multiple times before given the reigns to this past year’s Oscars. On an even more intriguing note, the script being written by Jenny Bicks (Sex and the City) has a co-starring role written for one Anne Hathaway, who happened to be Jackman’s opening number partner at the Oscars, as well (relive that performance with the video, here).

I’m probably most interested in Snyder’s Sucker Punch as he’s proven to deliver an astounding visual. The concept of biopic-as-musical intrigues, especially with the possibility of Anne Hathaway co-starring. But, to dismiss a Theron project when she easily holds her own if not dominates the “beautiful” category against the aforementioned female names, would be disrespectful. So, hell, at the moment I’m down for all of it. Which of the three projects piques your interest the most? And since I mentioned it, which of the three women?