Sandra Bullock is reportedly in the very early stages of negotiations with Sony to star in the studio’s Annie remake.
The Wrap broke the news, noting that she would play Miss Hannigan, the woman who runs the orphanage and the role Carol Burnett played in the 1982 film. Sony was looking for an actress with comedy experience and international appeal, notes The Wrap. Those are two qualifications Bullock certainly fits, considering she stars with Melissa McCarthy in the new comedy The Heat and she has plenty of other romantic comedies on her resume.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, which also later confirmed the news, Bullock was offered the role in March, but passed at that point. However, she and sony are back at the negotiating table.
Annie is set for a Christmas 2014 release, with the studio hoping for a holiday hit. Easy A director Will Gluck was hired to direct. Will Smith and Jay-Z are producing with Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment. Others on the producing team include Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett-Smith, James Lassiter, Jay Brown and Tyran “Ty Ty” Smith of Marcy Media.
Quvenzhane Wallis, who earned an Oscar nomination for Beasts of the Southern Wild, will play Annie, with Jamie Foxx as Daddy Warbucks (who has been renamed Benjamin Stacks for the new film).
Sony expects to start production in the fall.
Bullock won her Oscar for The Blind Side and she’ll next be seen in The Heat on June 28. She co-stars in Gravity with George Clooney, which opens on Oct. 4.
image: ABC