The screen career of Jennifer Aniston has been a frustrating one. She's been in hits and misses, critically acclaimed projects like "The Good Girl" and critically reviled ones like "Just Go With It," but she's arguably never quite found the role that will let her escape from the shadow of Rachel on "Friends." Maybe the Judd Apatow-produced comedy "Wanderlust," which opens next week will be that film, but in the meantime, Aniston's teaming up with a fast-rising British writer-director for another project.
According to Screen Daily, Aniston has signed on to play one of the leads in "Miss You Already," the next film from Paul Andrew Williams, who made an impressive debut with "London To Brighton," and whose film "Song For Marion," with Terence Stamp, Vanessa Redgrave and Gemma Arterton, was snapped up last year by the Weinstein Company with the hope that it might become the same kind of awards behemoth as "The Artist" and "The King's Speech."
This time around, Williams, whose other credits include horrors "The Cottage" and "Cherry Tree Lane," has teamed up with British comedienne Morwenna Banks, perhaps best known in the U.S. for being on "Saturday Night Live" for a brief four-episode stint in the 1990s, to write the script, which featured on last year's Brit List of the best unproduced screenplays from across the pond. Aniston will play one of two best friends whose relationship ruptures when one becomes pregnant and the other becomes ill, and the project's already been compared to 1980s weepie "Beaches."
Casting is currently underway for the other female lead (who we imagine will be a British actress, with the film being set in London), and filming will get underway in the summer, thanks to backing from Embargo Films ("The Sweeney," "Pusher"), so we'd expect to see this sometime in 2013.