Natalie Portman has committed to her first two movie roles since winning the Best Actress Oscar for Black Swan and taking maternity leave. Portman is joining the casts of the Terrence Malick films Knight Of The Cups, and Lawless. Portman will join Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Isabel Lucas in Knight of the Cups, which shoots this summer. She will follow by starring with Ryan Gosling, Bale, Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Haley Bennett in Lawless, the film Malick shoots in the fall. It will be Portman’s first time working with Malick, whose The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and is nominated for Best Picture and Best Director Oscars. Sarah Green and Nicolas Gonda are producing both films.

The addition of Portman certainly will create some buzz for both Malick films when the wheeling and dealing begins at EFM in Berlin tomorrow. FilmNation is selling international territories and CAA reps both films for domestic rights. The market hasn’t even started and Deadline has broken stories that Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg lead the package for the Emmett/Furla Films and Universal co-financed 2 Guns; that Joseph Gordon-Levitt will make his directing debut on a comedy he’ll star in with Scarlett Johansson for IM Global; and that The Devil Inside followup WER will be sold by Sierra/Affinity, with FilmDistrict now an equity player in the film with Incentive Filmed Entertainment. All those films will have action in Berlin and it is looking like there will be a lot of good product. My colleague Nancy Tartaglione will be on the ground in Berlin and Deadline will be all over the market. Portman is repped by CAA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

Source: Deadline