Despite being a major force on the creative side of it’s production, Variety report that Natalie Portman has been forced to exit the upcoming corset drama Wuthering Heights.

A scheduling conflict with a as yet announced acting project and also the preparation needed for her directorial debut - an adaptation of Israeli writer Amos Oz’s memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness meant she reluctantly had to depart.

On the plus side of things for director John Maybury (The Jacket, upcoming The Edge of Love) he looks to have found his male lead. Michael Fassbender, an up and coming Brit actor who was one of the 300 has entered final talks for the Heathcliffe role.

U.K.-based Ecosse Films are now coming up with a shortlist of names for Portman’s replacement. Who’s betting it will be either Kiera Knightley (who I actually thought was destined for the part), Emily Blunt or Sienna Miller?

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On Feb 1st when it was announced that we would once again have to endure the 10,000th adaptation of Wuthering Heights, I made the prediction that Kiera Knightley would continue her corset craze and land the leading role.

I was nearly right. It’s instead The Other Corsets Girl.

The Hollywood Reporter says Natalie Portman from the corset and period movies The Other Boleyn Girl and Goya’s Ghosts will lead the film as Catherine Earnshaw one half of a passion described as “intense, elemental and yet ultimately thwarted” with the currently uncast Heathcliff.

John Maybury (The Jacket and Knightley’s upcoming period film The Edge of Love) directs from a script by the writer of The Girl With a Pearl Earring.

Portman was the best of a terrible bunch in The Other Boleyn Girl and I actually didn’t mind the 2005 adaptation of the similarly much adapted Pride & Prejudice, so maybe there is some hope here.

So they’re resurrecting Emily Bronte’s classic novel “Wuthering Heights” for yet another big screen adaptation, because lord knows we haven’t seen this tale adapted before. Not like 100 times maybe.

Variety say John Maybury will direct the movie for Indie company Ecosse Films, the studio behind the flop corset movie BECOMING JANE. The script comes from Olivia Hetreed (THE GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING).

Maybury has just wrapped on the romantic period drama THE EDGE OF LOVE with Cillian Murphy, Kiera Knightley and Sienna Miller and it’s not much of a stretch to think that he has been talking to Knightley about this project on set. Hey, it may have ever been her suggestion to do the movie. Knightley also starred in Maybury’s 2005 thriller THE JACKET, and has also starred in the adaptation of another literary classic PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and I’ll be shocked if she doesn’t end up with the leading role here.

“Wuthering Heights” is a love story set in a class divide in the Yorkshire Moors and has been filmed over a dozen times. The most famous adaptation probably being the late 1930’s movie directed by the great William Wyler starring Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon and David Niven which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year and heralded the great cinematography of Greg Toland.

The most recent famous adaptation is probably the 1992 film version starring Juliette Binoche in dual roles and Ralph Fiennes, which was constantly on replay in my house during the mid 90’s, wether I liked it or not.
These movies are never all that popular in the U.S. but they ALWAYS do well in the U.K, and after PRIDE AND PREJUDICE taking $121 million worldwide from a $38 million budget, this development really shouldn’t surprise us at all.