According to Deadline, Kristen Wiig has stepped up to replace Reese Witherspoon in director Alexander Payne’s Downsizing. Wiig will be playing the female lead, a woman whose husband (Matt Damon) has been downsized due to some financial issues. Like, literally. He shrinks and moves to a community of tiny people to escape his money problems. Meanwhile, Wiig’s character will have second thoughts about undergoing the Downsizing, causing the kind of marital strife that can only happen when one spouse is a tiny person and the other is a normal-sized person.
Also, the Deadline article says Witherspoon had to drop out “over scheduling,” but hopefully that’s not just a story that the studio put out to cover-up some kind of shrinking incident. Maybe Witherspoon underwent the Downsizing procedure in real life to prepare for filming, but Damon or Payne accidentally stepped on her and crushed her tiny bones. That’s obviously a pretty shocking thing to suggest, but until Witherspoon makes a public appearance and officially announces that she didn’t shrink down and get stepped on, we’re going to have to assume it’s true.