Scoop /

Scoop is a 2006 American-British romantic comedy/murder mystery written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane, and Allen himself. Focus Features released the film. Following the memorial service for irrepressible investigative reporter Joe Strombel (McShane), Strombel's spirit finds himself on the barge of death with several others, including a young woman who believes she was poisoned by her employer, Peter Lyman (Jackman). The woman tells Strombel she thinks Lyman, a handsome British aristocrat with political ambitions, may be the Tarot Card Killer, a notorious serial killer of prostitutes, and that he killed her when she stumbled onto his secret. The Tarot Card Killer left a card on each dead body after each murder. Sondra Pransky (Johansson) is a beautiful but somewhat awkward American college journalist on vacation in London. Pransky attends a performance given by magician Sid Waterman (Allen), aka "The Great Splendini," and agrees to participate on the stage. While in a booth known as The Dematerializer, Pransky encounters Strombel's ghost who has escaped the Grim Reaper himself to impart his suspicions of Lyman to a journalist