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Julia Roberts & Meryl Streep Team for 'August: Osage County'

by Ethan Anderton
September 30, 2010
Source: Deadline

Two of the most popular and successful actresses are teaming up for what promises to draw a huge female audience into theaters. Deadline reports Academy Award nominated actresses Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep are coming together to star in an adaptation of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, the Pulitzer Prize winning book and Tony award-winning play. Letts also wrote the screenplay for John Wells (The Company Men) to direct. The story takes off when the father of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, and the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed.

Streep will play Violet, the drug-addicted matriarch of the working class Weston clan while Roberts will play Barbara Fordham, the oldest daughter in the family. Violet's problems and her penchant for revealing family secrets is a big issue, but Barbara is melting because her husband is cheating on her with a college student. They are brought together when Violet's husband goes missing and all three of their daughters come home to rally around mom. In the process, a lot of family secrets get revealed. Apparently the project has been in development for several years at The Weinstein Company, and it finally seems to be coming together thanks to their knew relationship with John Wells after picking up The Company Men. Sounds like Oscar bait to me. Anyone interested?

Explore tags: Casting, Movie News, Opinions

beavis

this could be good.................i just hope they don't "dumb it down" into a lifetime network - like movie.
DC

For fucks sake...........Streep does it again... first Doubt now this... The award winning actors who played the original, who gave birth to the roles who created them for the first time, fucking hell it must sting. I met the original cast of this stage production and they were all wonderful but Deanna Dunagan, who is the original Violet was off stage a small quiet woman with grace and charm but on-stage she was a force of nature, incredible, heartbreaking and twisted. She really should be playing this role, in fact the whole cast should be playing the characters on screen as they have done around the world. It will not, nor cannot improve on the original stage production.. it'll be something else. something different but it will not improve upon it. It's a shame that dollar signs are more important than the right casting. This is an Oscar worthy script and it's so good that Streep just has to show up and she'll have yet another nomination but it should be Dunagan who gets the chance, she deserves it. She's been a jobbing actor all her life and she said so herself she never thought she'd end up on Broadway with a Tony in her hand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfLcMLh1MmI She is magnificent as Violet. She deserves the chance to shine on screen as she did on stage. Julia Roberts will be fine. She can look tortured and shout a bit but again the original cast member would have been better. It'll be good because of the strength of the actors and the script but it will not be great