My Fair Lady Update: Keira Knightley out, Carey Mulligan in?

Looks like Keira Knightley is no longer doing My Fair Lady...or various or so online news reports were reporting...

Here's one of those entertainment news articles from Cinematical.com...

Last October, it looked like Joe Wright was going to help Keira Knightley become Eliza Doolittle in a remake of My Fair Lady. But Wright's involvement was quickly quashed, and now Knightley is saying no thanks as well. According to The Daily Mail, she has taken herself out of consideration for the role. See, although she'd been exercising those vocal chords in preparation, she was never officially offered the part, and the Mail says: "She is believed to have felt that the project was taking too long to get off the ground."

It's certainly not the longest pre-production stretch, but one has to wonder why they wouldn't have just officially offered her the part and moved forward. Were the My Fair Lady powers that be unsure of her in the gig? That seems likely. While names like Wright and Danny Boyle circled the director's spot, John Madden stuck. And as for the lead role -- actresses like Scarlett Johansson and Anne Hathaway may have led rumors, but focus has remained on British actresses. So who leads the rumor mill now? One of the front-runners is said to be Carey Mulligan -- a name that's been gaining a lot of clout after her performance in An Education.

Knightley, Mulligan, or someone else? The plan is to start production later this year, so they better figure it all out soon.