Warner Bros Seek Marion Cotillard To Play Morgana In 'Arthur & Lancelot'

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Marion Cotillard has become that rarest of things, the heavily-accented superstar. While she'd cropped up in Hollywood fare like "Big Fish" and "A Good Year" before, her Oscar victory in 2008 for Edith Piaf biopic "La Vie En Rose" catapulted her onto the A-list, and since then she's mixed blockbuster fare like "Public Enemies," "Contagion" and "Inception" with smaller home-grown projects like "Little White Lies" and "The Last Flight," while somehow finding time to have her first child with partner Guillaume Canet a few months back.

Next year sees examples at both ends of the scale, with a part, still shrouded in mystery, in "The Dark Knight Rises" and a dark, gruelling role in Jacques Audiard's "Rust & Bone," but at Warner Bros., where she's become something of a favorite of late, are now courting her for a return to tentpole territory, as Vulturereport that the studio have offered Cotillard the role of Morgana in the Round Table reboot "Arthur & Lancelot."

In legend, the character is a powerful sorceress, the half-sister of King Arthur, and generally seen as a villain (see Helen Mirren in "Excalibur"), although earlier takes on the tale have as a more benevolent figure. Given Cotillard's star quality, we imagine that this version, written and directed by "Wedding Crashers" helmer David Dobkin of all people, will be the former, but that's purely speculation at this point.

Should she sign on, Cotillard will join "Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington as Arthur and "The Killing" lead Joel Kinnaman as Lancelot, and while Gary Oldman was offered the role of Merlin, he has been dismissive of the project in recent interviews. But "should" is the key word as  she's meant to shoot James Gray's "Low Life" in January, around the time that Dobkin's film will be underway, while she's also attached to partner Canet's English-language debut "Blood Ties" along with Mark Wahlberg and Zoe Saldana, so scheduling could well be a problem here. Word on Cotillard's involvement will presumably be revealed long before "Arthur & Lancelot" is released on March 15, 2013.