After an excellent, nuanced and emotive turn in Mike Mills' "Beginners" earlier this year, and with a Steven Soderbergh collaboration arriving in January of next year ("Haywire"), is Scottish actor Ewan McGregor finally back on track?
Over the years, we've lamented his post-"Star Wars" prequels career, which basically leaves the actor's work in an unmentionables section, but we've always been rooting for the guy to find his footing again — he's talented, as his early arthouse work illustrates, and apparently he's one of the nicest and easiest guys in the industry to work with.
Well, it looks like he's back. Another fine addition to his upcoming resume is a lead role in Noah Baumbach's forthcoming adaptation of Jonathan Frazen's "The Corrections" for HBO, which already stars Chris Cooper and Dianne Wiest.
Centering on the various stories of a dysfunctional and repressed Midwestern family spending one last Christmas together, "The Corrections" will star Cooper and Wiest as the pater familias and matriarch of the family, respectively, and McGregor will play Chip, the Marxist academic middle child who reunites with his brood during the holidays. Two more actors need to be cast, one to play the eldest son Gary, a successful but depressed, alcoholic banker living in Philadelphia; and the youngest, Denise, an also successful Philadelphian chef with her own romantic problems.
Scott Rudin is the producer, and so far Baumbach is shooting the drama pilot, but it's unclear how many episodes this thing will run and whether Baumach will be directing all of them (we hope he is). And no word when it'll turn up on HBO, but we hope sooner, rather than later. [Deadline and THR]