"She didn't feel confident about doing the accent"

Screen Daily interviews John Maybury and the subject of the Wuthering Heights new film project is discussed. The Yorkshire accent seems to be behind Natalie Portman's drooping the project:

[China] Moo-Young: You're working on Wuthering Heights and Natalie Portman has just pulled out. How difficult is it to cope with setbacks like that?

Maybury: Natalie was very honest and said she didn't feel confident about doing the accent, which she'd been concerned about from the beginning. I'd already signed up Michael Fassbender as Heathcliff before Cannes, and he was being called the new Marlon Brando in Cannes [where he appeared in festival hit Hunger] so it's those film gods again.
When they first approached me they wanted it to be a weird, dark version of the weird, dark tale. We were going to have an all-British cast, maybe unknowns. And then they said,
"We've just set up a meeting for you with Natalie Portman." I thought, "Hmm, she's not exactly unknown, is she?"

Remember this interview to Brian James? According to Publishers Weekly his book The Heights, a modern love story inspired by Wuthering Heights, will be published by Feiwel and Friends next spring.

Claire Armitshead from The Guardian's Book Blog mentions the reference to Jane Eyre in Sam Savage's Firmin (a book that was already discussed here on BrontëBlog):

The eponymous Firmin, of Sam Savage's novel, is the runt of a litter born in a shredded copy of Finnegans Wake in the basement of a run-down Boston bookstore where he develops a passion for literature (lettuce, he complains, tastes much like Jane Eyre).

The Kennebec Journal - Morning Sentinel reviews the current performances of Charles Ludlum's The Mystery of Irma Vep in The Theater at Monmmouth (Maine):

If you're an English major, and who isn't, and you read more than Vanity Fair and People magazines, you'll hear snatches of Ibsen, Shakespeare, Poe, the Bronte Sisters, Omar Khayyam and Oscar Wilde plus the aforementioned two master comics splitting eight roles between them, Dustin Tucker and Mike Anthony playing men, women, mummies and dogs. (J.P. Devine)

The Gwent Gazette (Wales) announces that

EBBW VALE Operatic and Dramatic Society are set to stage a classic next May at the Beaufort Theatre – the Welsh premiere of the musical version of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. (...)
An opportunity exists for young people between the ages of eight and 16 to audition for the roles of young Jane Eyre (aged eight-12), Helen Burns (aged 12-18), John Reed (aged 10-14), and a chorus of 10-15 orphaned schoolgirls (aged eight-16).
If you are interested in auditioning for any of these roles, please contact Jay Jones on 01495 303794.
Auditions take place on Wednesday, September 3 at 5.30pm in Rassau Senior Citizens’ Hall. Audition pieces will be available for collection between 5.30 and 6.30pm thisWednesday, July 23 at Rassau Senior Citizens’ Hall.

The Brontë Society (Region 7) meets today in Alcoa, TN:

When: Tuesday, July 22, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Panera Bread, 733 Louisville Rd., Alcoa, TN (Metropulse)

Categories: Alert, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights