Kunis and Portman to star in Aronofsky’s Black Swan

Mila Kunis is set to go toe-to-toe en pointe with Natalie Portman in Darren Aronofsky’s supernatural ballet thriller, Black Swan. In a pas de deux face-off that may or may not be a figment of her character’s imagination, Portman sees Kunis as a threatening competitive presence. THR had these plot details last month:

“Swan” centers on a veteran ballerina (Portman) who finds herself locked in a competitive situation with a rival dancer, with the stakes and twists increasing as the dancers approach a big performance. But it’s unclear whether the rival is a supernatural apparition or if the protagonist is simply having delusions.

Those who’ve read the script say it’s a spine-tingler with elements of “The Others,” the Nicole Kidman breakout in which viewers are left to discern what’s real and what’s imagined.

The draft of the script I’ve seen opens with the suspicious suicide of a prima ballerina and within minutes begins to spiral into guilt trippy visions and semi-hallucinatory sensations. But that script, credited to John G. McLaughlin, has apparently been completely rewritten by Mark Heyman, a development VP at Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures. Heyman had screen credit as Aronofsky’s assistant on The Fountain, and moved up to producer for The Wrestler.

From Repulsion to Don’t Look Now to Images, I get off on the creepy tingles generated inside the minds of seriously mixed-up female protagonists. Black Swan sounds like a great opportunity for a visual stylist like Aronofsky to return to the schizo labyrinthine roots of Pi and Requiem For A Dream, so I’m really looking forward to this one.