Angelina Jolie Signs Up For Movie Of Gigantic Atlas Book

Despite what everyone thinks, Angelina Jolie isn't just a full-time husband-stealer and baby-gathering humanitarian. Oh no, Angelina Jolie sometimes manages to squeeze in making movies amongst the relentless do-goodery, too.

Since she gave birth to her baby Shiloh Nouvel in a dusty Namibian shack under a single bright star earlier in the year, Angelina Jolie has only managed to gingerly dip her toes back into the world of moviemaking. But now Angelina Jolie is getting ready to take a run-up and do a great big moviemaking bellyflop – she's getting ready to star in an adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, a monumentally heavy-going objectivist 1,100 page book written by one of the 20th century's leading philosophers. Woo-hoo! Save us a line in the popcorn queue for this one!

Angelina Jolie is currently best-known for three things: 1) Letting Brad Pitt spuff up her until she got pregnant, then running off to Namibia to give birth to Shiloh Nouvel, selling the baby photos to People and making Jennifer Aniston quite angry, 2) Her continued quest to make the world a better place by being a UN spokesperson, prolific adopter of refugees and phenomenally self-important orator and 3) Not really ever making any films that have been very good lately. 

Numbers one and two of these are taking care of themselves – Shiloh Nouvel is now friends with Gwen Stefani's kid and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have just started their own charitable foundation – but number three has been causing Angelina Jolie a few problems lately. Angelina has yet to erase the horrific triple-header of Taking Lives, Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow and Alexander, and so she's putting motherhood on the backburner to concentrate on putting that right and making the film that will define her long after she's dead.

With this in mind, Angelina Jolie seems to be determined to make as many thumpingly serious films as she can. First it was announced that Angelina would play the widow of dead war journalist Daniel Pearl in a new movie, but that's not enough for Angelina Jolie – she won't stop until she's been in an adaptation of a ferociously unwieldy book that acts more like a philosopher's manifesto than an actual narrative-driven novel. Thank God, then, for Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – Angelina Jolie has just signed up for the Atlas Shrugged movie remake, where she'll star as railway worker Dagney Taggart. Here's how IGN describes the story of Atlas Shrugged:

The story follows two characters, Taggart and maverick steel magnate Hank Reardon, as their respective industries are threatened by growing government interference and the mysterious disappearance of key industrial leaders. What happens when the country's thousand smartest, most productive, and most inventive people are removed from society? What happens to the world if Atlas shrugs?

Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand's introduction to her objectivism philosophy, and it was nominated the second-most influential book in the Library of Congress after the Bible, so the Atlas Shrugged movie will no doubt be the place to go to take girls to convince them that you're deeper and cleverer than you actually are, especially if the 60-page speech by one character makes it to the screen intact.

Will Atlas Shrugged be the role of a lifetime for Angelina Jolie? It's hard to say – we think it'll be a toss-up between her Atlas Shrugged character and that funny kung fu cartoon tiger character that she'll be doing soon, anyway. 

Read more:

Jolie Takes On Atlas – IGN

[story by Stuart Heritage]