TV actress Shailene Woodley has joined the cast of Alexander Payne’s tragicomedy fatherhood tale, “The Descendants.”
Woodley — who most recently led ABC’s “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” — will the play the elder of the two daughters of George Clooney’s protagonist who finds his life at a crossroads after the death of his wife, and decides to take a trip with his daughters to find the man she was having an affair with.
Nat Faxon and Jim Rash adapted the the screenplay from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel. We previously reviewed the script and thought it was catered “to play to Payne’ strengths” and that “everyone is real (not movie reenactments of real people), the dialogue is incredibly naturalistic and easy, the descriptions are intuitive, and the characters are built through what they say and how they say it.”
Production on the film is slated to begin sometime this month in Hawaii for what we imagine will be an Oscar-baiting fall release later this year.