Scarlett Johansson to star in Just Cause again, but this time she’s an adult and also it’s a TV show
Scarlett Johansson is returning to one of her very first film roles, but now as the lead character
It’s been almost 30 years since 10-year-old Scarlett Johansson played a little kid in the Sean Connery-starring crime thriller Just Cause (an adaptation of the John Katzenbach novel of the same name) and now she’s going to be replacing Connery in a new take on the original book. That comes from Deadline, which says this new adaptation will actually be a TV show from writer Christy Hall, with Amazon’s Prime Video giving it a straight-to-series order.
Johansson is going to star as Madison “Madi” Cowart, a reporter for a Florida newspaper who is asked to cover the final days of a murderer on death row who claims to be innocent. In the previous adaptation, the main character (Connery) was reconceived as a liberal law professor who was opposed to the death penalty, with Johansson—in only her second film role and her third acting role ever if you count an appearance on Late Night With Conan O’Brien—playing his daughter. The original Just Cause movie also starred Laurence Fishburne, Blair Underwood, Ed Harris, and Kate Capshaw.
This will be Johansson’s first regular TV gig, having previously just popped up for a few voice acting roles on Robot Chicken and the six episodes of Saturday Night Live that she hosted. Sean Connery, by comparison, never did a voice on Robot Chicken, never appeared on SNL, and wasn’t even in The Avengers. (Let us have it in the comments, pedants! This is a gift to you!)
Finally, just because there is a minimum word count on news stories, we have to point out that this Just Cause has nothing to do with the video game series of the same name, so Johansson will not by jumping out of cars and using a grappling hook to fly over to other cars before crashing them into helicopters. Or maybe it will? They might have to pad it out for television.