Whitely New Frontrunner for Fox's Replacement

First AICN, then Geekweek, and now the UK Sun and Deadline are all reporting that professional model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is the front runner to replace Megan Fox in Transformers 3 as the love interest for the Sam Witwicky character.

The Sun reports, "The British Victoria's Secret model, 23, has been offered the role in the sequel - after Megan sensationally quit the franchise last week." Meanwhile, Deadline is reporting she is the top name of a short list of three names that includes Sarah Wright and model Brooklyn Decker. Apparently Michael Bay's goal is "to launch a fresh face". He has another week to make a final decision as the chosen actress is not scheduled to shoot scenes with Shia LaBeouf for another two weeks.

If four different sites indicating Rosie’s casting isn’t enough, here is my tidbit to add fuel to the fire. A source informed me yesterday that she has already been added to the cast insurance program which is usually reserved for lead roles and supporting characters whose roles are key enough to production that their loss (say death) could cause a significant expense for the film.

Of the three choices, my preference would be Sarah Wright. Partly because she is hot, partly because she has acting experience and partly because I just "buy" her more as a potential girlfriend for Sam then a supermodel. As the casting of Fox had proven, Sam's life is a large part of geek fantasy fulfillment (gets the car, the girl, saves the world, etc) and I guess the casting of a model does continue the trend. Too bad, Bay could have cast Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski and made it 3 for 3 in casting hot blonde Australian women for roles in his films.

The news does seem to negate the news that Fox quit (or fired) over weight issues since the short list, at least going by a quick Google image search, do not exactly strike me as doing a credible job of avoiding the too thin look that Fox was accused of having.