Juno Temple Joining Paul WS Anderson's Three Musketeers 3D

In the race to get a new version of The Three Musketeers to screens, it looks like Paul W.S. Anderson is pulling ahead of Doug Liman. Way ahead. Anderson's film has had most of the cast set, and now is fitting the last puzzle pieces together. Juno Temple is in talks to play one of the last major open roles.

THR reports that Temple would be taking a gig as 'the royal highness' in Anderson's 3D version of the story. That likely means that she'd bee playing Anne of Austria, the Queen Consort of France.

In the original Alexandre Dumas novel, she's a part of one of the early adventures of D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman) and the three musketeers Porthos, Athos and Aramis (Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans and Matthew Macfadyen) which puts him into opposition with Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) and his agent Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich).

One gets the idea that this isn't going to be the most faithful adaptation, however, so we'll see how the characters all intersect. It'll likely be at least a bit different from the novel.

The film has been picked up by Summit, says a separate THR report, which has set a summer 2011 release date. That has pulled the shooting start date forward from September to August.

"We recognize the blockbuster potential of 'The Three Musketeers,' so summer 2011 is the ideal window," says executive producer Martin Moskowicz. "It means we have to start filming a month earlier than planned, but we are ready to shoot."

The competing Warner Bros film directed by Doug Liman is also going into production this fall. Anderson's movie will roll first, and we haven't yet heard about any cast for Liman's version. Given the speed with which Anderson's movie is coming together, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if WB makes some serious changes to Liman's film. Anderson shoots and cuts fast enough that there's little chance WB can beat him to release.