Too Much of a Good Thing?

In my review of Batman Begins yesterday, I repeated the old saw that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Maybe that's incorrect. Internet Movie Database is reporting that Warner Bros, unhappy that Katie Holmes's romantic life continually upstaged the opening of their film, have not asked the star to reprise her role in the Batman sequel. Apparently Christian Bale, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman have all signed on, but Katie never received the offer. But enough about her, who's going to play the Joker . . . ?

What if Katie wasn't Tom's first choice for the woman he's fallen madly in love with? On its Website, in a story that's referenced further down the same IMDB page as above, Radar magazine tells us that, had she played her cards right, Scarlett Johansson could have been the woman of Tom's dreams. Johansson had been scheduled to costar with Tom in Mission Impossible III and met with him about the project. At one meeting, coincidentally held at the Scientology Center in Hollywood, Cruise apparently turned evangelist and gave her a couple of hours of in-depth counseling on what Scientology could do for her until Johansson begged off and left. Coincidentally, shortly after that encounter, she discovered that scheduling conflicts had arisen with MI III and withdrew from the project. Radar claims Tom also wooed Jessica Alba, Kate Bosworth, and Lindsay Lohan before becoming smitten with Katie Holmes. It makes you wonder if maybe Penelope Cruz had a moment of clarity similar to Johansson's. Pouring more gasoline on the fire is a report at FOXNews about Katie going missing for a few days before she showed up with her new soul mate (and also adding Jennifer Garner's name to the list of potential girlfriends). All this just strengthens my expectation for some sort of major development in the Cruise-Holmes relationship for the War of the Worlds opening.