Jodie Foster, seen here at the premiere for "RED," should have a very busy 2011 thanks to joining the cast of Neill Blomkamp's 'Elysium'

Credit: AP Photo

This is very good news, indeed.

As much as I admire and respect Jodie Foster as a filmmaker, I would always rather have her in front of the camera.  I think her presence is missed in mainstream film, and I think she's one of the most intriguing and unusual leading ladies of our age. 

I've always had a particular fondness for the work she did in "Contact," a film that seems to still hotly divide viewers (our own Greg Ellwood broke my heart a little when he told me this morning that he hates the film) even now, thirteen years after its initial release.  Foster hasn't really dabbled in the "lesser" genres much, so "Contact" remains one of the clearest examples of what sort of SF might actually draw her to participate.

Good to keep in mind, since she's been added to the cast of "Elysium," which is Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to his Oscar-nominated "District 9."  This means Jodie Foster will co-star with Matt Damon and Sharlto Copley in the top-secret film which starts shooting some time this year.

I'm not sure when that will be, but Foster does have prior obligations to Roman Polanski for his new film "God Of Carnage," which also features John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, and Christoph Waltz all digging into Yasmina Reza's Tony-winning material.  And she's got to do whatever publicity there is to be done on her troubled film "The Beaver," which was garnering some really strong early word-of-mouth before Mel Gibson's latest round of personal tabloid problems sidetracked the film's release.

Hopefully she'll deal with both of those things and then move on to Blomkamp so we can see "Elysium" in 2012.  I'm excited to see this one coming into focus, and as "Elysium" moves forward, I'm sure we'll continue to cover it here at HitFix.