News: Rachel Weisz

Brit lovely Rachel Weisz is just one of the big names in this week’s kids’ fantasy Eragon, though she’s only on voice duties. We’ll soon be seeing a lot more of her, however, with a number of big parts in big movies due over the next weeks, months and years.

Due in January, after a perhaps appropriately insanely long wait, is oddball director Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain – a much-delayed, hugely ambitious sci-fi/fantasy romance spanning 1,000 years and three separate, if linked, storylines revolving around Hugh Jackman’s efforts to find Weisz, his one true love. It has been slated at least as much as praised by those who have seen it so far, so could prove interesting.

Then will come more standard fare, with Weisz’s turn in the comedy/romance Definitely, Maybe, written and directed by the writer of Bridget Jones 2 and Wimbledon. But then it’s back to the experimental, with a role in cult director Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, starring Norah Jones as a woman taking a road trip across the US, and co-starring the likes of Jude Law, Tim Roth, Natalie Portman and Ed Harris. She’ll be teaming up with Wong Kar-Wai again in 2008 for a remake of Orson Welles’ classic The Lady From Shanghai, with Weisz set to take the Rita Hayworth role.

Before that, though, it’s back to comedy, with a part in the Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughan-starring festive bit of fun Fred Claus, due Christmas 2007, as well as another return to Africa following Weisz’s superb, Oscar-winning turn in The Constant Gardener. This time it’ll be a period piece, with Weisz playing the object of Colin Firth’s affections in the 19th century historical drama The Colossus,covering the final years of Cecil Rhodes’ regime in what is now Zimbabwe. Sir Ian McKellen will take on the role of the imperial hero/scoundrel.