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Producer Walter Parkes begs to differ.
"Julia has definitely signed and so has Brad Pitt," says Parkes, whose films include Saving Private Ryan and American Beauty.
"Brad will play a hitman who is sent to Mexico to retrieve a priceless hand-made gun. Julia is his girlfriend.
"It's a Coen Brothers-style movie about the irrationality of love."
Nicholson, Penn and ... Popoff?
Okanagan actor Robert Popoff got quite a surprise after an audacious act.
He saw that a movie called The Pledge was schedule to film in B.C. and sent his resume directly to the L.A. casting agent. Weeks later, he got a call to fly to Vancouver to audition for a small role of a prisoner who gets beaten by police who recapture him.
"I thanked the casting agent, but said I didn't think I could make it in. I didn't tell him I didn't think it was worth the plane fare," explains Popoff from his ranch in the Okanagan.
"Then he asked if I knew that the director of the movie was Sean Penn and the scene was with Jack Nicholson. Needless to say, I was on the next plane."
Though Popoff insists his audition was a bust, Penn liked his look and cast him.
"While we were waiting for our scene, Jack talked about his love for fishing. It was a very short scene, but it ended with him giving me the famous Jack smile.
"Jack plays a burned-out cop who gets reinvigorated when he starts investigating the murder of a young woman."
Popoff says Penn may be a tiger in public, but the actor/director is a pussycat on his own sets.
"Sean ate with the crew and extras and he addressed all by name. His wife (Robin Wright-Penn) and mother (Eileen Ryan) are in the movie and he has a lot great character actors like Sam Shepard and Mickey Rourke in cameo roles."