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Saturday, February 27, 2010

New role will have Jolie rolling in lolly


Actress Angelina Jolie is set to earn up to $ 100-million as the star of a series of movies featuring crime-busting forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta.

The deal confirms Jolie as the most powerful female star in Hollywood, with veto rights over every detail in the series.

She insists the films, based on Patricia Cornwell's crime novels, should be "realistically bloody", in response to TV forensic dramas such as Bones and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Her character should be "sexy smart".

Cornwell, who based the Italian-American scientist on Marcella Fierro, a medical examiner from the US state of Virginia who has since retired, said last week that US actress Jodie Foster had wanted to play Scarpetta in the '90s, but the deal fell through. In 2000 Cornwell was paid $5-million by Sony Pictures to develop the character for the screen, but nothing materialised until Jolie expressed an interest last year.

The first Scarpetta movie, which will be an original story based on Cornwell's characters, is due in cinemas in two years.

SOURCE