Maggie Gyllenhaal has signed on for the lead role in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, a sequel to the 2006 film that starred Emma Thompson.
According to Variety, the following actors are also booked for the movie: Maggie Smith, Rhys Ifans and Asa Butterfield. Ralph Fiennes is in discussions for an uncredited cameo.
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Count Maggie Gyllenhaal as one of Heath Ledger's biggest Academy Award supporters.
"I would vote for him," Gyllenhaal told reporters Monday at the film's London premiere when asked if her The Dark Knight co-star was worthy of a nomination.
Gyllenhaal, who shares a memorable scene with Ledger during a party thrown at Bruce Wayne's apartment, said of the actors Oscar prospects that the "degree of difficulty should be incorporated into the award."
"To be that incredible in a movie that's this huge, that's about so many things, is really an accomplishment," Gyllenhaal said. "In a way I feel funny thinking about the Oscars when he isn't alive, but at the same time I'm a member of the Academy and I would vote for him.
Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight.
But as film fans know, it's a role that Katie Holmes took on in Batman Begins. As Gyllenhaal recently told The Los Angeles Times, though, that she was committed from the beginning to making the character her own.
"When [director and co-writer] Chris Nolan gave me the script, he said, 'She's not quite finished yet,'" Gyllenhaal said of the character. "So I read it, and I had a lot of ideas about ways that I thought that she could be stronger. And he was very open and collaborative and interested. In that first preliminary conversation, a lot of things that we talked about ended up in the movie.
It was really trying to find a way that I was absolutely in love with Harvey Dent and absolutely in love with Bruce Wayne, the ways I found them both honorable, ethical, moral men and the ways that I had problems with their ethics and morals."
Heath Ledger isn't the only new face of the Batman franchise.
Maggie Gyllenhaal has replaced Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight. The actress talked briefly to Metro.co.uk about the role:
Is your Batman character a damsel in distress?
There are moments of that. Chris Nolan, the director, would joke about how I had to resign myself to being a little bit of a damsel in distress but he pushed me in other ways to make her a powerful character. I play a lawyer and have real relationships with the people I'm interacting with in the movie. She's very smart and a real rounded person.
Of course, if you're the girl in Batman, you're going to be a damsel in distress to some extent but she's a really great character. So many people I play are a mess; Rachel's really clear about what's important to her and unwilling to compromise her morals, which made a nice change.
