Ewan McGregor has one good performance to his name. It was in Trainspotting, and it happened 12 years ago. As far as his box-office draw goes, put his name on the marquee of any movie that doesn’t contain Ewoks and it’s a pretty safe bet you’ll be losing money, HARD. Don’t believe me? Just look at his IMDB. Sure, there are a few winners on there, but by a wide margin McGregor’s lost the industry more money than he’s made it. As a result McGregor has ended more careers than cocaine and Richard Gere combined, yet for reasons that escape even Hollywood’s top entertainment scientists, he keeps getting cast as the lead in countless movies remotely period or Englishy. So while it’s confounding and illogical, it came as no surprise when Fox Searchlight announced today that McGregor would play opposite Hilary Swank in their upcoming Amelia Earhart biopic, entitled Amelia.

McGregor will play Gene Vidal, the West Point football star (most famous for siring a gay boy named Gore) supposedly involved in an illicit tryst with Earhart, who was married to wealthy publisher George Putnam at the time. Putnam will OF COURSE be played by none other than – wait for it – Richard Gere, who is like the actor equivalent of Ishtar. I dunno, maybe Searchlight figured if they put the two biggest known box office poisons on the planet in the same movie they’d cancel each other out, kind of like how AIDS cancels out Hepatitis C. At least that’s what the Haitian witch-doctor told me before injecting me with AIDS. Or should I say, he “injected” me. Get it? Nudge-wink. I meant in the butt.

McGregor’s most recent film – the $25 million thriller Deception costarring Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams – opened April 25th and went on to gross $4.8 million domestically. Some might say the film tanked; I however, would say the film McGregored. Meanwhile Fred Drekker, director of such awesome films as Night of the Creeps and Monster Squad, still can’t get work because the latter failed to live up to studio expectations. Will Amelia thrust any catch-phrases into the zeitgeist the way Monster Squad did with “Wolfman’s got nards?” Unlikely. What is virtually guaranteed is that Amelia will lose a shit-ton of money. The next time some actor bitches to you about how hard he has it, do me a favor: kick him in the throat.

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