Update: Penelope Cruz Very Unlikely for von Trier’s Planet Melancholia?

She has braved about two decade’s worth of horrible English language films and became the renowned actress that she is thanks to Pedro Almodóvar pushing her beyond her comfort zone, so if today’s great piece of casting news from the Euro trades does pan out, we can expect the actress to truly venture into unchartered waters.

With the EFM & Berlin in full prep mode, the very believable news that Penelope Cruz would be joining the greatest director in the world is good news for art-house patrons. Lars von Trier humorlessly referred to himself as the best — I’ll defend the Dane by saying he was simply having fun with the media frenzy in Cannes, and if Cruz follows the same mental concourse that Charlotte Gainsbourg might have endured in the filming of Antichrist, then we can be hopeful that Planet Melancholia resembles something closer to Tarkovsky/Pasolini than dystopian examples such as Blindness or The Road.

Update: Call it a problem in translation, but thanks to thePlaylist, we can file this under (producer was hoping to get the starlet but it doesn’t look like its going to happen.