There is only one Marilyn Monroe, but now two actresses are set to embody the bombshell on screen. It was announced this week at the Cannes Film Festival that Naomi Watts, 41, will play Monroe in a biopic based on author Joyce Carol Oates’s controversial, fictionalized memoir, 2000′s Blonde. The movie, also called Blonde, is reportedly slated to start filming in January.

Meanwhile, 29-year-old Michelle Williams is in active negotiations to play Monroe in a film directed by Simon Curtis, which focuses on the late screen legend’s time spent in England while filming 1957′s The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier.

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Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s voyage to “Shutter Island” has landed them at No. 1 at the weekend box office.

Their creepy crime thriller set at a remote insane asylum opened with $40.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. A Paramount Pictures release, “Shutter Island” is the fourth collaboration for Scorsese and DiCaprio and the best opening yet for both the director and star.

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For Michelle Williams, the pain from losing Heath Ledger hasn’t gone away – it’s just a different kind of hurt.

“After the first year, the pain is less intense; it’s less immediate,” Williams, 29, tells the October issue of Vogue. “But the magical thinking goes away too. And that’s a whole new reckoning. But every time I really miss him and wonder where he’s gone, I just look at her.”

The actress is referring to their daughter Matilda, who was just 2 years old when Ledger died in January 2008 of an accidental drug overdose.

Williams, who had split from Ledger months before his death, initially spent much of her time with her daughter, but returned to dating late last year. “I thought falling in love again was the only thing that was going to save me from the pain,” says Williams, who was seen with director Spike Jonze. “This erroneous idea: It just makes things more complicated.”

Still, she remains optimistic about her future with Matilda. “I feel hopeful and grateful,” she says. “For a while I thought we had lost everything. It makes you want to love better and live better.”

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This Shutter Island decision is now the second major studio pic to jump from Fall 2009 to February 2010 (after Universal’s The Wolfman recently moved off November). But Paramount’s adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel directed by Marty Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio looked entrenched for October 2nd and this coming awards season. For godsakes, the pic is already on people’s Oscar list. Such a surprise delay is just going to compound all the buzz surrounding the picture and its great trailer released in June. An insider tells me. “It tested in the high 80s/low 90s and Scorsese even brought it down to 2 hours.”

So what’s the problem? I hear that Paramount told the filmmakers it doesn’t have the financing in 2009 to spend the $50M to $60M necessary to market a big awards pic like this. (But a studio source insists to me it’s got the cash, just not the home video sales: “Given where the DVD business is in 2009, our only hope is the economy and the retail business rebounds in 2010 because the hardest hit segment has been movies that play to an older adult audience,” a studio source tells me.)

*UPDATE: I’m also told that, among the many reasons for the move, Leo wasn’t going to be available to promote the pic internationally.* So the studio settled on the release date of February 19th because “that’s when Silence Of The Lambs came out” back in 1991 and it won the Oscar. “Now that the Academy has expanded Best Picture to 10 films,” my insider notes, “it will be easier for a movie that came out in the beginning of the year to get nominated.”

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