Audrey Tautou (“Amelie,” “Coco Before Chanel”) has picked up her next leading role and it’s yet another period piece. The French star will play the lead in “Therese B,” an adaptation of François Mauriac’s famous novel set in the 1920s that chronicles the life of Therese Desqueyroux, a free-spirited but unhappily married woman who struggles to free herself from social pressures and the boredom of suburban life.
Tim Robbins and James Gandolfini have joined the cast of the HBO film “Cinema Verite,” which already stars Diane Lane. The TV movie follows a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the groundbreaking 1973 PBS documentary series “An American Family.” Written by David Seltzer, the original show was (according to Wiki) “twelve episodes long, edited down from about 300 hours of footage, and chronicled the experiences of a nuclear family, the Louds of Santa Barbara, California, during a period of time when parents Bill and Pat Loud separated and Pat filed for divorce. ” Apparently it’s now seen as one of the early antecedents of reality TV and the son was one of the first openly gay characters on television.
Katherine Heigl may have dropped “Grey’s Anatomy,” but she’s keeping busy and hopefully trying to remind people that like in, “Knocked Up,” she can actually be charming once in a while and not totally detestable. She’s been cast as the lead in “Age Of Adaline,” which is evidently an “epic” love story that Lakeshore Entertainment are going to finance. Mills Goodloe (“Pride”) and Sal Pascowitz (“Nic & Tristan Go Mega Dega”) penned the script, which follows a young woman who is rendered ageless after an accident at the turn of the 20th century. After years of a solitary life, she meets a man who might be worth losing her immortality. No male has been cast and an October shoot is being eyed. Honestly we kinda wanna like Heigl for some reason, but this sounds awful.
Speaking of Ms. Heigl, Jason O’Mara (star of ABC’s “Life on Mars”) and Daniel Sunjata (“Rescue Me”) have joined her in the project, “One For The Money.” It’s about… sigh… a newly-divorced, recently laid-off 30-year-old (Heigl) in New Jersey who becomes a bounty hunter. Oh well, scratch that one off your list too.
Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball (creator of “Six Feet Under” and “True Blood,” and the writer behind “American Beauty”) are bringing “The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks” to HBO. The nonfiction best-seller chronicles the true story of a poor black woman (Henrietta Lacks) who died of cervical cancer in 1951, and without her consent, pieces of the tumor that killed her were removed and used for medical exploration and helped build a billion-dollar research industry.
It’s been rumored for a while and now a sequel to “Diary Of A Wimpy Kid” has been officially green lit. Wait, what film and why? Who cares. All you need to know is that it was made for a paltry $15 million and quietly took in $65 million dollars at the box-office. Fox smells a modestly profitable winner here.