It looks like two actresses have come aboard to add some flavor to a sports-world comedy that will find Gerard Butler weaving through relationships both on and off the pitch.
Variety reports that Uma Thurman and Jessica Biel have joined “Playing the Field,” a soccer movie that features Butler, playing a troubled father and former semi-pro soccer player, who tries to make up for lost time by coaching his son’s team. He ends up in trouble when he gets involved with some of the local soccer moms. Biel will play Butler’s ex-wife who is engaged to be married, while Thurman will play a woman on the prowl for Butler. The project actually originated as a baseball story called “Confessions of a Little League Coach” but was reconfigured in a way that will clearly give it much more international appeal.
The film is set to be directed by Gabriele Muccino (“Seven Pounds,” “The Pursuit of Happyness“) with a script in place from Robbie Fox (“So I Married An Axe Murderer,” “In the Army Now“). Lensing will begin next month, after which Butler will transition over to Curtis Hanson‘s gestating surfing pic “Mavericks.” As for Muccino, he’ll direct the supernatural romance tale “Adaline” following this project, early in 2012.
Sounds like an intriguing little endeavor, but with Muccino’s tendency to turn up the sentiment and Fox apparently specializing in particularly broad strains of comedy, this has the potential to be all over the map. We’ll wait to see how this one plays out.