Scarlett in running for South Pacific revival

Scarlett Johansson is reportedly in the running to star on Broadway in a “sexy” revival of musical South Pacific.

The 22-year-old, who has just signed up for her third role in a Woody Allen movie, is being considered for the part of nurse Nellie Forbush in the Lincoln Centre production, according to the New York Post.

In the musical set during the Second World War, Forbush falls in love with an older man, suave South Seas plantation owner Emile de Becque.

Reese Witherspoon is also on director Bartlett Sher’s wish list, the newspaper said.

Johansson is known to be a huge fan of the show’s creators, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, and has apparently made no secret of her desire to star in a musical.

She met Andrew Lloyd Webber to discuss appearing in his West End revival of The Sound Of Music, but he decided to cast an unknown after she backed out.

Johansson’s starring role in the as yet untitled Allen movie, which is set to be shot in Spain in the summer, makes her the actress he has used most frequently since the days of Mia Farrow and Diane Keaton.

She has already appeared in Match Point and Scoop, both shot in London.

South Pacific, which premiered in 1949, will reopen in January next year, the Post said.

Sher is reportedly set to audition opera singers to play de Becque, in a few weeks, with Russian tenor Dimitri Hvorovstovsky a likely candidate.

“They want the leads to be sexy,” a production source told the newspaper.

“This is not going to be a stodgy old production of South Pacific.”