As far as his big-screen output goes, Paul Weitz has been keeping a fairly low profile as of late. This is not to say that the writer, director, playwright, and producer hasn’t been busy. He released an amicably scaled-down indie in the form of last year’s Lily Tomlin-starring “Grandma” that amassed mostly good reviews, particularly for its lead actress’s performance. Weitz has also garnered considerable acclaim for his work on the Amazon comedy “Mozart in the Jungle,” a show that he produces and frequently directs alongside show creators Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman. Though Weitz doesn’t seem to be interested in shifting the paradigm, so to speak, with his film and television output, he’s been involved a steady stream of decent-to-pretty-good output since his unexpectedly moving 2011 immigrant drama “A Better Life.” And for his next project, it sounds like Weitz has a pretty killer story to tell, not to mention one hell of a cast.
READ MORE: Julianne Moore & Robert De Niro To Star In Limited Series For David O. Russell
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Weitz’s next project is “Bel Canto” — a tense-sounding hostage drama based on a book by Ann Patchett — that he will direct from his own adapted script. Patchett’s book was a bestseller upon its initial release and the story’s grim real-world resonance may provide Weitz with just the canvas he needs to knock this one out of the park.
Oh, and that cast I mentioned! Julianne Moore plays lead Roxanne Coss: an American soprano who travels to South America to perform at the private birthday party of a wealthy Japanese industrialist to be played by Ken Watanabe. During the performance, armed insurgents overthrow the party and start taking hostages whilst demanding the release of their imprisoned brothers. Demian Bichir, who was the emotional anchor of Weitz’s “A Better Life,” will play a guerilla general overseeing the standoff and questioning his own humanity in the midst of a situation that’s only growing worse by the minute.
This sounds like the kind of gripping, grown-up drama we’d love to see Weitz making more of, instead of more movies like, well, “Admission”. No word yet on when cameras are set to roll on pre-production, but given how things go at TIFF, we’d venture it’ll be relatively soon. Stay tuned.