Just five weeks before the remake of Bunny Lake Is Missing starts shooting, Reese Witherspoon has dropped out. The film, which is being directed by CHUDdy Buddy Joe Carnahan, is now without its star… and one of its producers, a role Witherspoon was also filling.
This development puts everyone in a bad place. Five weeks is not a lot of time to find a new star, so the start date will likely get pushed. But Carnahan is locked in to White Jazz starting first thing in the new year, so this will surely screw up all of his scheduling. The whole turn of events is a bummer, in fact – Carnahan was taken out of the directing game for a very long time due to projects that fell apart or that happened without him, and I hate the idea that instead of the quick succession between Smokin’ Aces, Bunny Lake Is Missing and White Jazz we’re going to get a two year hiatus. This guy needs to be directing movies.
Bunny Lake Is Missing is a remake of the classic Otto Preminger film, which was a premake of The Forgotten AND Flightplan. In the 1965 film, a woman reports that her daughter has gone missing… only to be told there was never any such daughter. Just like now there isn’t any such Reese.