So the word in casting news is that Megan Fox is negotiating to star in writer-director Judd Apatow’s next comedy for Universal. The comedy’s plot, which will involve Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann reprising their Knocked Up roles, is being kept under wraps, as is Fox’s role.
As much as director Michael Bay would like to be the one who claims to have “discovered” Megan Fox, going as far as giving her an uncredited role as the Stars-and-Stripes Bikini Kid Dancing Under Waterfall in Bad Boys II, she did star in a Swedish television program called Ocean Ave. that most in the U.S. have never heard of. So if there is truth in Bay discovering Fox, then he’s the one who opened the Pandora’s Box containing paparazzi and dumb producers willing to cast her as the lead in such movies as Jennifer’s Body and Jonah Hex.
But let’s not be too hasty and say that there’s no way she’ll make it in Hollywood. Nobody took Anne Hathaway seriously until after The Princess Diaries, when she was out of the Magic Kingdom and given the freedom to remove her clothes on screen.
Judd Apatow may see something in Megan Fox that most other filmmakers don’t. We know the story of Katherine Heigl’s participation in Knocked Up, replacing Hathaway due to a schedule conflict, and her subsequent disparaging remarks of Apatow and how the comedy was “demeaning toward women.” But she has a history of playing the blame game. The trait must have been given to her after working with Steven Seagal on Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.
Fox probably won’t be that difficult a talent to work with. Having been the subject of tabloids and having received critical drubbings, she’s probably humbled to the fact that a film-maker like Judd Apatow is interested in her at all.
Until the Knocked Up spin-off goes into production, you can next see Megan Fox in Friends with Kids opposite Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig and Adam Scott.
