New: Drew Barrymore

Former wildcat Barrymore seems only to crop up in romantic comedies these days, and this week’s Music and Lyrics is no exception. Her next two movies, however, are an overdue shift back to drama.

First up is the latest from L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson, with Barrymore the love interest to Eric Bana’s troubled professional poker player in Lucky You. It’s due out in the UK on 27th April – unusually for an American film a week before it hits cinemas in the States. It was originally meant to be out last year, so make of that what you will…

After that she’ll be staring alongside Jessica Lange in Grey Gardens, based on the lives of the dotty aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy, both named Edith Bouvier Beale and both one time society beaus, but who ended up living together as oddball recluses before a major tabloid scandal forced their First Lady relative to come to their aid. Could be good, but it’s from a first time writer/director whose only previous cinematic experience was as production assistant on the rather poor Deep Impact and The Seige, so don’t hold out too much hope.

Poor Drew. Where did it all go wrong? Oh yes… The drugs – that’d be it…

News: Scarlett Johansson

Even before this week’s magical movie, Hollywood’s hottest starlet had got used to working alongside her The Prestige co-star Hugh Jackman on the set of Woody Allen’s Scoop, yet to be scheduled for a UK release, where she plays an American journalism student in London who lands a big story – and an affair with Jackman’s aristocrat. She’ll be cropping up as a student again (well, she is still only 21, with her 22nd on the 22nd of this month) in American Splendor directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s New York-set The Nanny Diaries, where she’ll play the titular nanny, living and trying to keep up with her studies in the household of Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney’s Mr and Mrs X.

But Johansson’s far too canny to risk getting typecast, so it’s good to see her lending her help to the current revival of the period drama, with no less than four historical projects in the works. She is still attached to star as Betsy Balcombe, the daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte’s British jailer at the end of the French Emperor’s life, in Napoleon and Betsy – although the project seems to have been on hiatus for some months. More recently announced – though with little as yet known other than that it came from an idea by Johansson herself – is Amazon, which could well be a female version of Gladiator, with Johansson in the Russell Crowe role as an avenging warrior in 200BC.

Most interestingly, however, is a brace of British-based history pieces, both set in the Tudor era. First up, based on the bestselling novel by Philippa Gregory and directed by the man behind the BBC’s recent adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House, is The Other Boleyn Girl. With Eric Bana lined up as Henry VIII and Natalie Portman as his ill-fated second wife Anne Boleyn, Johansson will play the “other” Boleyn of the title, Anne’s sister Mary, who was also having an affair with the King. After that, Johansson will take on royalty herself in Mary Queen of Scots, with her in the title role, based on a script by Cracker creator Jimmy McGovern. See? They always told you that history could be cool…