Rooney Mara replaces Jessica Chastain in The Secret Scripture

I just heard that after Rooney Mara wraps Joe Wright's Pan - currently shooting in London [we talked about that yesterday], she'll head to Ireland to replace Jessica Chastain in the adaptation of Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture.

Bummer! I wrote about the book-to-movie back in November 2013 and I was really looking forward to seeing Chastain as the younger version of Vanessa Redgrave's character, Roseanne, a 100 year old woman who shares the details of her life - spent mainly in mental institutions - in a secret diary. Rooney will now play the younger Roseanne who survives a terrible childhood but then suffers at the hands of a cruel and vindictive Catholic priest. 

Rooney Mara seen here in the upcoming drama Carol, 

based on Patricia Highsmith's lesbian love story, The Price of Salt

Shooting begins in Ireland in September with Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot) directing from a screenplay by the beloved late Irish writer Johnny Ferguson. Ferguson, known for the Irish television series Fallout and Gangster Number One, died too early in April of 2013. 

Chastain goes on to other projects; both The Zookeepers Wife, based on Diane Ackerman's book about the husband and wife who saved the Warsaw Zoo during WW II, and Blonde, in which the red-head plays the ultimate blonde icon, Marilyn Monroe, in the adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates 'novel'. So many thousands of words have been written about the mysterious Marilyn, earnestly trying to get to the roots of the blonde beauty's identity while Joyce Carol Oates, who has said she never wanted to or planned to write about Marilyn, uses a fictional approach to lay bare the truth of the star's world.