Beautiful Emmy Rossum, star of the television drama Shameless, is in final negotiations to join Beautiful Creatures, a supernatural love story whose cast is populated with Oscar nominees. Variety says Rossum would play a dark witch in the story, which is being adapted from a popular novel and could have franchise potential.
In 2004, Rossum appeared ready to break out and become a major, major movie star. She has lead-supporting roles in Joel Schumacher’s The Phantom of the Opera and Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow. Then … not much. She appeared in Poseidon and Dare. She inexplicably took a part in Dragonball: Evolution. And she’s been getting raves for co-starring opposite William H. Macy in Shameless. But Creatures sounds like her first legitimate shot at a big-screen comeback.
Director Richard LaGravenese will direct Beautiful Creatures, which is based on the first of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's three Caster Chronicles novels. The stories follow two Southern teens (Jack O'Connell, Alice Englert) whose relationship forces some nasty secrets about their families and their town to surface.
As we reported earlier, Oscar nominee Viola Davis and two-time Oscar winner Emma Thompson joined the Creatures cast, giving LaGravenese a sturdy foundation on which to build. Rossum, once signed, would play Ridley, a cousin to Englert's character who becomes a dark witch on her 16th birthday. Now, she and Englert’s character are mortal enemies.
Production on Creatures should begin next month in New Orleans, with an eye toward a 2013 release date.
