A recent survey put the cost of raising a child at £200,000. However, for the actors James McAvoy and Ann-Marie Duff, their baby will have set them back more than £1 million even before the birth.

Mandrake learns that McAvoy, 30, who starred in Atonement, has pulled out of a Hollywood film for which he would have been paid a “seven-figure sum” because he was afraid that he might miss the birth of his first child.

Shooting starts on the film, which had been called I’m With Cancer, in Canada tomorrow, but the American actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been drafted in to replace McAvoy, whose 39-year-old wife is in the later stages of her pregnancy.

“James wants to be there when his baby’s born,” says a friend of the Scot, who lives in Crouch End, north London, with Duff. The couple met on the set of the television series Shameless and married in 2006.

Duff, a Londoner, who played John Lennon’s mother in the film Nowhere Boy, is understood to want the birth to take place in the capital.

“It’s incredibly unfortunate that circumstances outside of everyone’s control have taken James away from the project,” says Seth Rogen, the Canadian actor, who is also a producer on the film. “We all look forward to working with James in the future.”

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Here’s hoping everything’s OK with James McAvoy and family.

The Scottish actor has dropped out of the untitled comedy previously known as I’m With Cancer “due to unrelated circumstances beyond his control,” a McAvoy rep tells E! News.

A source close to the production says a family emergency prompted his sudden exit from the project.

No official details about said “circumstances” have been forthcoming, but we’ve heard that the emergency has nothing to do with his wife’s pregnancy.

McAvoy and wife Anne-Marie Duff revealed in January that they are expecting their first child together.

With the 30-year-old thesp busy attending to his offscreen life, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has stepped up to costar with Anna Kendrick, Seth Rogen and Bryce Dallas Howard in the based-on-a-true-story comedy about a mild-mannered young man who is diagnosed with cancer and situational humor ensues.

“It’s incredibly unfortunate that circumstances outside of everyone’s control have taken James away from the project, but with James’ blessing, we were able to have Joseph step in to take on the role of Adam,” Rogen, who’s also a producer on the flick, tells E! News. “We all look forward to working with James in the future.”

Added director Jonathan Levine, “I feel extremely lucky that our film has found an exceptional actor to step into the role of Adam. I have admired Joseph’s work since Brick, and I am so excited to work with him.”

Cameras are scheduled to start rolling in Vancouver on March 8.

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt has replaced James McAvoy as the lead opposite Seth Rogen in Summit/Mandate’s comedy formerly titled “I’m With Cancer” as the film was about to start shooting.

Summit announced Tuesday that McAvoy had left the production “due to unrelated circumstances beyond his control.” The minimajor didn’t elaborate.

The untitled film will begin shooting next week in Vancouver. It also stars Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall.

Rogen, who’s also a producer on the project, said in a statement, “It’s incredibly unfortunate that circumstances outside of everyone’s control have taken James away from the project, but, with James’s blessing, we were able to have Joseph step in to take on the role of Adam. We all look forward to working with James in the future.”

The film will be directed by Jonathan Levine from a script by Will Reiser. Project is produced by Rogen, producing partner Evan Goldberg and former “Daily Show” exec producer Ben Karlin. Reiser is exec producing along with Mandate Pictures president Nathan Kahane.

Gordon-Levitt, who broke out last year in “500 Days of Summer,” will portray a man who learns he has cancer and successfully battles the disease over several years. Character is based on the real experiences of screenwriter Reiser, who won his own fight with cancer in his mid-20s.

Gordon-Levitt’s credits include the upcoming “Inception,” recent Sundance entry “Hesher” and “Brick.” He’s repped by CAA.

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Wanted creator Mark Millar has told STV that a sequel to the blockbuster movie will go ahead this year despite the non-involvement of the first movie’s lead actress Angelina Jolie.

According to New York Magazine she has dropped plans to reprise her role as Fox in the Wanted franchise to star in Alfonso Cuarón’s space thriller Gravity, but Millar explained that that won’t torpedo plans for the sequel to be shot for release next year. (Be warned, spoilers for the original movie lie ahead…)

Millar said: “Wanted 2 will be certainly going ahead, because the first one made too much money for them not to do a sequel.

“What was funny was originally Wanted was just going to be one movie, and Angelina dies at the end, Morgan Freeman dies at the end – sorry to anyone who hasn’t bought it yet…

“The idea was that it was going to be self-contained, but the movie cost $75 million to make and it made $314 million back just theatrically. At the premiere the tracking was really good and everything, and the producer came up and said ‘What are we going to do for Wanted 2?’ and I was like ‘I don’t have any ideas!’

“So they put something together, and it was bringing Angelina back from the dead and everything. I don’t know, I think that probably just didn’t sit easily with her, because it has to be a really good reason why somebody comes back from the dead.�

The 2008 film adaptation of Wanted, which was based on Millar comic book miniseries, starred Scottish actor James McAvoy as a frustrated office worker who learned that he is the son of a professional assassin and shared his superhuman killing abilities.

Millar added: “I think it’s actually more authentic if they keep her dead. She was the star of the movie really, but how cool is it to have the star dead and bring in another cool character for the next one.

“What I heard was that there’s filming this year for a release at the end of next year, so the plot that they had will have some modifications now, her character will have to be written out completely.

“We’ll see what happens, I don’t know, it changes every day. Again, things get so out of your hands with film because 300 people are involved, whereas with comics it’s just you and your artist.�

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Universal craved a sequel to Angelina Jolie’s assassination tango/loom tutorial Wanted. Unfortunately for the studio, Jolie is leaving them…wanting. We’ve just heard the actress has pulled out of the planned Timur Bekmambetov-directed sequel at Universal, and the studio has pulled the plug rather than recast the film. As for Jolie, we hear she is now intent on starring in Warner Bros.’ Gravity, a space thriller to be directed by Children of Men’s Alfonso Cuarón from a script he wrote with his 28-year-old son, Jonás.

Like Wanted 2, Gravity had previously been set up at Universal, with Jolie set to star. But a few weeks ago, the studio put Gravity into turnaround, possibly because it’s such an artistically challenging project: Jolie would be alone on-screen for much of the movie, playing the sole surviving human member of a space mission, desperately trying to return home to Earth and her daughter. (In that way it’s reminiscent of the brilliant, little-seen Moon with Sam Rockwell. Seriously, why won’t you see it?) Now Warners has snapped it up, and it will be produced by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows producer David Heyman and Legendary Pictures.

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New casting news for Im With Cancer

Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall have joined the cast of Summit/Mandate’s comedy formerly titled “I’m With Cancer.”

Pic starring Seth Rogen, James McAvoy, Anna Kendrick and Bryce Dallas Howard is due to start shooting later this month in Vancouver.

The film will be directed by Jonathan Levine from a script by Will Reiser. Project is produced by Rogen, producing partner Evan Goldberg and former “Daily Show” exec producer Ben Karlin. Reiser is exec producing along with Mandate Pictures president Nathan Kahane.

McAvoy portrays a man who learns he has cancer and successfully battles the disease over several years. Character is based on the real experiences of screenwriter Reiser, who won his own fight with cancer in his mid-20s.

Huston was most recently seen in “When in Rome,” while Baker Hall’s credits include “Zodiac.”

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James arrived in Vancouver on Sunday.

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