Julie Andrews, Gemma Arterton, Matthew Goode and Gabriel Byrne will star in director Neil LaBute’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Crooked House,” reports Variety. Julian Fellowes and Tim Rose will write the script for the film based on the novel, which is described as follows:
In the sprawling, half-timbered mansion in the affluent suburb of Swinly Dean, Aristide Leonides lies dead from barbiturate poisoning. An accident? Not likely. In fact, suspicion has already fallen on his luscious widow, a cunning beauty fifty years his junior, set to inherit a sizeable fortune, and rumored to be carrying on with a strapping young tutor comfortably ensconced in the family estate. But criminologist Charles Hayward is casting his own doubts on the innocence of the entire Leonides brood. He knows them intimately. And he’s certain that in a crooked house such as Three Gables, no one’s on the level…
The film, budgeted at about $20 million, is scheduled to start filming in the UK this summer.
“The story has a couple of fresh sides to it that I didn’t remember from Christie’s work,” LaBute told the trade. “There’s a love story, which didn’t feature strongly in many of her books, so that seemed very different to me and fresh. Plus it’s quite morally ambiguous, which also appealed to me.”
