Angelina Jolie is Kay Scarpetta. Really?!

Angelina Jolie
Show me the body!
One of our eagle-eyed tweeps alerted us to the news that in the upcoming film adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s Red Mist, Angelina Jolie will play Dr. Kay Scarpetta. We will leave it to you to debate whether this rises (sinks?) to the level of Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, but it certainly had our eyebrows up. After all, we’d just become accustomed to thinking of “Scarpetta” as a guinea pig!

Comments

  1. Clare 2e

    @eva_hudson just tweeted: Will she do the whole thing in skimpy vest and shorts?

    HA!

  2. Laura K. Curtis

    *snicker* Well after Tomb Raider, I guess she liked working with corpses.

  3. Nora-Adrienne Deret

    Does anyone other then me think that Scarpetta was BLOND??? So I’m guessing it will be artistic license if they don’t put her in a wig.

  4. Becky Hantsbarger

    I agree with NoraA…I thought Scarpetta was blonde. And more mature? I don’t know if this reaches the same level as Cruise as Reacher (I’m still upset about that one!), but it does seem to indicate a decided trend torwards the lack of faithfulness to the written word.

  5. Susan Dalsing

    Angela Jolie is Scarpetta in the same way that Katherine H is Stephanie Plum.

  6. Nora-Adrienne Deret

    And who says that makes it right? I’m sorry that Estelle Getty passed on, she should have been the grandmother in the Plum movie. In which case they should have gone with Betty White, since she can play crazy real well. I can just see her pulling out a long barreled .44 magnum at the Plum dinner table and shooting a hole in the ceiling. LOL

  7. Susan Dalsing

    I guess the casting director says that makes it right, I sure don’t.

  8. Terrie Farley Moran

    You’re kidding, right? Oh, I guess you’re not. Well, I don’t know about Jolie playing Scarpetta. She always give a tinge of psycho to her characters and I don’t see Scarpetta as a psycho.

  9. Susan Dalsing

    I am beginning to wonder if you people can read…….so I will lay it right out. I think the casting of Angelina Jolie and Katherine Heigl is bad bad bad. Is that good enough. I will now make sure never to enter your special place and post again.

  10. Laura K. Curtis

    Terrie –
    I have to say, “you’re kidding” was my first reaction to the news. But that was also my first reaction to the Tom Cruise news. I just don’t get the vast majority of casting decisions for movies made from books!

  11. Nishita

    I would have loved to see Jodie Foster or Meryl Streep as Kay Scarpetta

  12. Jordan Foster

    If forced at gunpoint to cast Angelina Jolie (whom I do actually like in the right movie) in some role in a Cornwell adaptation, she could make a decent Lucy. Or Carrie Grethen, for all those diehard fans who remember her in From Potter’s Field. Of course, that would all depend on the Scarpetta casting. I’d love to see someone like Helen Mirren take up KS’s scalpel. Alas…

  13. Linda O.

    No more improbable than Tyler Perry as Alex Cross. Sometimes I wish books could remain books and I could continue to nurse my vision of what the characters look like.

  14. Jordan Foster

    For a while, Idris Elba was attached to play Alex Cross. Then I read somewhere that he was considered “too edgy.”

  15. Deborah Lacy

    It’s like a contest to see who can make the biggest mis-cast. This choice may well win.

  16. Megan Frampton

    Ooh, I love the idea of Jodie Foster as Scarpetta! Too bad that didn’t happen.

  17. Terri Grimes

    how stipid, needs a woman with brains and charcter will not watch or read her books again

  18. pnf

    Agree with N above–Jodie Foster would be a much better Scarpetta.

  19. Cindy Rankin

    There are those who think she is sexy, so maybe that was the criteria for casting her as Kay Scarpetta. Jodie Foster or Meryl Streep would have been great.

  20. Andrea Slaughter

    I saw it on a blog somewhere that Cornwell and whoever produces the Scarpetta movie are going to base the movies on a younger, up-and-coming Scarpetta, in the formative stages before she became the unassailable doctor we read about today. If that’s true, should be interesting!

  21. april heys

    i think michelle pfeiffer would be a great kay scarpetta, and i also think, kathryn morris.

    and maybe jeremy ratchford for marino!

  22. Shelby

    Scarpetta is said to have been born in 1954, or possibly 1956 (when author Patricia Cornwell was born).

    This means that, by any measure, Scarpetta would now be in her mid-50s.

    Now, as a healthy, robust, still-evolving woman born in 1956, I think this is 100 percent OK. I do have some concerns about AJ playing Scarpetta. I’m thinking perhaps a more age-appropriate actress: Meryl Streep, Debra Winger, perhaps Kathleen Turner…

  23. RottN1

    Diane Lane is Scarpetta. This is disappointing.

  24. CathM

    Jodie Foster would definitely do a tolerable job as Scarpetta, but I really think Sharon Stone is Scarpetta. I mean, she’s not one of my favourite actresses or anything, but for the Scarpetta role, she’s got the look, and can do the demeanor.

  25. Lindseyyyyy

    I really like the idea of Jodie Foster as KS. Also, not sure why, but Kate Mara enters my mind as Lucy.

  26. Nancy Allison

    Laura Linney. She has the right stuff – intelligent, bold, yet a bit shy and tentative at the same time. Love the idea of Denis Franz as Marino. Sarah Wayne Callies as Lucy, Mark Harmon as Benson.

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