Scarlett Johansson.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Los Angeles: Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson says the work on the upcoming Amazon thriller series Just Cause is in progress and its script is being developed.
The project was announced by Amazon in 2022 but got delayed due to the writer's strike.
"It's coming along... It's being written," the 39-year-old actor told Deadline during the premiere of her upcoming film Fly Me To The Moon.
"There was a little bit of a pause during the strike so some of the development, it was like everyone – we were in a holding pattern, but we’re now writing away.” The original thriller mystery, which featured Johansson as the young daughter of protagonist Paul Armstrong, played by Sean Connery, released in 1995. It was based on John Katzenbach’s 1992 novel.
Johansson is now starring and executive producing the show. The gender of the main protagonist, a Miami newspaper editorial writer Matt Cowart, has been changed. Now, Johansson will play the female lead Madison 'Madi' Cowart, a struggling reporter from a Florida newspaper sent to cover an inmate on death row.
The original film, directed by Arne Glimcher, and also starring Laurence Fishburne, Ed Harris, Blair Underwood and Kate Capshaw, had changed the title character from a journalist to a professor, who is called by his former student, an African American, to save him from the gallows. The student has been convicted of the rape and murder of a young white woman. Just Cause was only the second film for Johansson, who made her debut with North in 1994 as a child artist.
Filmmaker Cord Jefferson and writer John Wells are co-writing the first episode of the new version of Just Cause and both will also serve as the executive producers. It is produced under John Wells Productions.
Meanwhile, Johansson's film Fly Me To The Moon is slated to release on July 12. Directed by Greg Berlanti, the film is distributed by Columbia Pictures.
The actor plays Kelly Jones in the romantic comedy also stars Channing Tatum and Woody Harrelson. The project has has been described as a "sharp, stylish comedy-drama set against the high-stakes backdrop of NASA’s historic Apollo 11 moon landing", by the makers.