After Angelina Jolie’s turn as Evelyn Salt in Phillip Noyce’s spy thriller found $293 million at the global box office, audiences automatically turned to the inevitability of a sequel outing and began watching for signs of a second round. It was not until 2011 when Columbia re-hired screenwriter Kurt Whimmer who worked on Salt’s franchise launcher to draft another installment. Alas, things did not work out as Jolie herself was a bit unimpressed with the script and refused to commit, sparking the term ‘developmental hell’ to proliferate when referencing this project.
Today, things have taken a step forward as the studio has hired Seven Years in Tibet scribe Becky Johnston who sounds like someone the former Lara Croft-player might be okay with considering her fiance Brad Pitt starred in Johnston’s last picture. Of course, this is far from a guarantee that things are definitely going to work out for another Jolie portrayal of the Russian spy as that will all hinge on how the script develops.
Do not feel too depressed if this movie never comes to light. Jolie will be up on the big screen again fairly soon as she fills the title character in Disney’s big budget Maleficent–a movie based on the infamous evil witch from Sleeping Beauty which many consider the Mouse House’s most evil character thus the high profile status of this pic. Maleficent will bow in theaters 15 months from now which should explain why few in the mainstream have heard much of anything pertaining to this effort as of yet. Unknown director Robert Stromberg is helming the pic from writer Linda Woolverton who is now hard at work on the sequel to Alice in Wonderland.