Hugh Jackman In Baz Luhrmann Epic Project

Russell Crowe having dropped out of writer-director Baz Luhrmann's untitled period epic, fellow Australian Hugh Jackman has signed on to replace him, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Jackman will star opposite Nicole Kidman in the 20th Century Fox romantic action-adventure set in northern Australia before World War II. The film centers on an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across the country's most unforgiving landscape, only to face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by Japanese forces.