We can’t really say we’re too surprised by anything Robert De Niro does anymore, so when Variety announces that the actor is in final talks to join the third installment of an Italian romantic comedy franchise, we just shrug our shoulders and go, “Oh, that Robert De Niro” while quietly wishing that he’d get around to reuniting with Martin Scorsese.
Anyway, “Manual Of Love 3” by director Giovanni Veronesi will be the latest installment of a very popular series that has already brought in a combined $45 million at the Italian B.O. The films are not unlike “Paris, Je T’Aime” or “New York, I Love You,” investigating love at various stages through shorts and vignettes. In the film, De Niro “will play a divorced American professor living in Rome” and his role will require some dialogue in Italian. Certainly, with De Niro’s presence, international distribution suddenly becomes a very viable possibility for the film.
The film will mark De Niro’s first foreign-language production since Bernardo Bertolucci’s “1900” in 1976. As for De Niro’s next two films to hit the big screen, they couldn’t be more different. He’s in “Machete” opening on September 3rd and the troubled “Little Fockers” which will open on December 22nd in time to ruin Christmas for everyone.