I honestly couldn’t care less about this news as the idea of Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts teaming together doesn’t interest me in the slightest, but that’s the case as Deadline reports Streep will play the drug-addicted matriarch of the working class Weston clan in the film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer and Tony-winning darkly comic play August: Osage County.
The film centers on the Weston clan and while mom is popping pills, the father has disappeared and Barbara (Roberts), the oldest daughter in the family is bound for divorce after learning her husband is cheating on her with a college student. It’s entirely possible I could love this film, but this pairing doesn’t do it for me.
The Weinstein Co. is set to distribute after developing the film for several years and has brought on John Wells to direct from a script adapted by Letts himself. Wells is best known as a producer and director of nine episodes of “ER”, but his feature film debut will be this fall with The Company Men starring Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Rosemarie DeWitt, Chris Cooper, Maria Bello and Craig T. Nelson.
Production is expected to begin by next summer.
