Sigourney Weaver confirms "Useful Idiots" to film in early 2026

In an interview for the December issue of Empire UK, Sigourney confirmed that she is indeed participating in Joseph Cedar's upcoming project Useful Idiots, with filming expected to get underway early next year. Initial reports had suggested a January timeline. From the article: 

Although, I am playing Meryl Streep's best friend in a movie that's going to shoot at the beginning of 2026 (Joseph Cedar's Useful Idiots). And that'll be fun! I mean, how rare is it to have two older women who are best friends, and have a history together? I'm delighted they're even having that in a movie, that's a shock. And so now, yeah. I'm ready finally to play the best-friend part. 

That's as solid confirmation as I think we need that this is moving forward. As previously reported, Callie Khouri (Thelma & Louise) penned the screenplay. No official word on whether this is officially a feature film or a limited series, but my impression is that it's a film. Still no word on plot, and maybe I'm reading too much into this, but Weaver stating that she's playing Meryl's best friend suggests to me that Meryl may have more a lead role and Weaver supporting. I certainly hope Meryl features prominently regardless, and would love for it to be a co-lead scenario! With Khouri's writing, that latter would not surprise me at all. Hopefully when the trades announce this project more formally we'll get some sense of a plot. Knowing Cedar's filmography, I'm not anticipating a comedy. 

Episode 8 of "Only Murders in the Building"--season 5

Meryl's character of Loretta returned for episode 8 of Hulu's Only Murders in the Building last night. It was interesting in that the majority of the episode centered on Loretta, Mabel (Selena Gomez), Williams (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), Lorraine (Dianne Wiest) and Camila (Renée Zellweger). They have a sort of ladies night in the casino in the basement of the Arconia, with Loretta, Mable, Williams and Lorraine intent on getting a confession out of Camila for killing Lester. 

Loretta pretends to be a psychic (with an Eastern European/Russian accent I think) in an attempt to get some information from Camila. I have to admit I'm sort of blind to a lot of the details of the plot of this show at this point because I find them so insane and uninteresting, but it was definitely fun to see Meryl onscreen again with Zellweger, after their pairing in 1998's gem One True Thing (which I just watched this past weekend because it reminds me a lot of this time of year). 

Two episodes left of this series season. I suppose Loretta will show up in at least one more before she "heads back" to New Zealand (yawn).  

Here's hoping the rumors of Useful Idiots, the Joni Mithcell biopic and/or The Corrections actually come to fruition so that Meryl can be delivered of this material. Sorry to be negative, guys. I'm sure she's had/having a blast filming Murders, but it is exceedingly tedious at this point. Looking forward to more interesting things for her. 

Episode 6 of "Only Murders in the Building"--season 5

Meryl returned to the small screen tonight for episode 6 of the latest season of Hulu's Only Murders in the Building. This is her character Loretta's first appearance in the season. Loretta's apartment in Los Angeles burns down and she shows on her husband's (Oliver) door in New York. The episode goes on to see Loretta and Oliver teaming up to track down the characters Lorraine and Sofia (played by Dianne Wiest and Téa Leoni, respectively), whom they suspect are murderers. 

OK that's a super simple summary of Loretta's involvement in the episode and I don't feel like getting further into it because the show is getting so tedious for me to want to bother. I think it would be good if they wrapped up the series after this season. All that said, it was great to see Meryl in something new. She and Martin Short have a nice chemistry, not surprising as they seem to be a couple off-screen as well. Meryl does a Cajun accent in the episode, which Loretta calls a "chunky Cajun drawl" that one of her characters in SVU has. I don't know the accent well enough to know whether or not Meryl nailed it, struggled with it, or purposely didn't do it well because "Loretta" the character wouldn't be able to do it well. It was also nice to see her working opposite Dianne Wiest again (2020's Let Them All Talk), particularly as they discuss opera singer Maria Callas and her final performance of Tosca at the Met. Meryl of course considers Callas the "greatest artist of the 20th century." 

Overall it was a cute episode, and I imagine it'll be the one that Martin Short submits for Emmy consideration next year, being it covers the arc of his character having to recall memories and experiences of a tough childhood in a series of foster homes. 

Streep and Weaver rumored for "The Useful Idiots"

Let's take this with a rather large grain of salt again considering the source, but World of Reel is reporting today that Meryl and Sigourney Weaver are circling a project at Amazon entitled Useful Idiots. Thelma & Louise writer Callie Khouri wrote the screenplay and it apparently already has a director attached, Joseph Cedar. Cedar is known for his films Footmate and Norman, among others. 

I did a little sleuthing and there are reports as far back as 2020 of Khouri having written The Useful Idiots (the "The" is in most of the articles I've seen other the the World of Reel one) as a series. The World of Reel article seemed to intimate that this would be a feature film, but who knows. 

While Jordan Ruimy doesn't have the greatest of reputations among discerning readers whom I've followed, the fact that this is/was a legit project form Khouri and has a director already named/attached, along with a specific co-star, makes me feel that it wasn't conjured from thin air. Ruimy suggests that filming is set to start in January. If that were to happen, it doesn't seem like The Corrections would get underway before that time. Speaking of the latter project, I really want it to happen. It would be so dumb for it to essentially go through development hell three times only to never see the light of day as a screen production. But they may be taking a while to complete the script. 

As far as The Useful Idiots, there is no mention in any source I can find of what it might be about. A "useful idiot" is, by definition "a pejorative description of a person, suggesting that the person thinks they are fighting for a cause without fully comprehending the consequences of their actions, and who does not realize they are being manipulated by the cause's leaders or by other political players." Seems likely to have a political bent to it, which is not surprising considering the times we live in and, of course, Meryl's interests. 

After a year and a half of hand-wringing, if every rumored or announced project comes to fruition in the next couple of years, we could have:

The Devil Wears Prada 2

The Useful Idiots

Narnia (voice)

Joni Mitchell biopic

The Corrections

Mamma Mia! 3

Glad to see she's back!

"Big Little Lies" season 3 might actually happen after all

Multiple sources are reporting today that Francesca Sloane (co-creator and showrunner of Mr. & Mrs. Smith) has been hired by HBO to pen the first episode of season 3 of Big Little Lies. Author Liane Moriarty's much anticipated follow-up to the original novel is apparently set for release in 2026. Which I'm guessing means that shooting for season 3 would not begin until the earlies the second half of next year. That book involves a time jump, per Moriarty, where the kids are all teenagers. This would fit nicely for the current ages of all the actors, as season 2 was already way back in 2019. 

We don't know what this means for Meryl. Knowing that Moriarty specifically wrote a character for Meryl for the second season, I would not be surprised if she somehow included "Mary Louise" in the new book. At the same time, I think it would totally make sense if they moved on from that storyline, and I personally would not mind if Meryl moved on to other, original projects (same with Only Murders in the Building). 

More to come, I'm sure. 

Francesca Sloane

Anya Taylor-Joy asked about Joni Mitchell biopic

When news came out a few weeks ago that Anya Taylor-Joy was attached to star in the rumored Cameron Crowe biopic on Joni Mitchell, I deliberately didn't post about it because all the sites reporting about it seemed to simply be echoing it from one source. Not that I've shied away from posting rumors on this blog over the years, but I've learned that "scoops" from The InSneider should be taken with a healthy portion of salt. 

That said, Anya Taylor-Joy is at the Toronto International Film Festival for the premier of her film Sacrifice. She was interviewed on the red carpet by ET and at the end asked about her involvement with the project. Starts at 1:04. 

It's what Taylor-Joy did not say that makes me lean toward her likely involvement. I was reminded immediately of the way Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci reacted when they've been asked about the Devil Wears Prada sequel in the year or so prior to when shooting started. They give this sort of wide-eyed "I'm not allowed to say anything to confirm or deny this" look. If she were not involved at all, she'd just say "No" or "I don't know anything about that," while likely praising Mitchell and/or Streep. It doesn't guarantee that it's going to happen, or that Meryl will even be involved, but this reaction from Taylor-Joy speaks volumes to me about whether or not this is a real thing. Which seems more and more likely to me that it is. The news of Streep and Taylor-Joy is even on Joni Mitchell's official website. 

Keeping a close eye on this of course. 

Wish list entry #14: "The Emperor of Gladness"

This past winter I happened to come across Abraham Verghese's novel, The Covenant of Water. I read it and, while long, I was quite taken by its scope, detail, and the believable humanity showcased in its characters. Oprah had chosen it for her book club, and I enjoyed the book so much that I ended up watching the videos of the podcast she and Verghese did together. It was likely from this viewing that the YouTube algorithm then put to the top of my suggestion list the video of Oprah's May book club entry, Ocean Vong's second novel, The Emperor of Gladness. 

Watching that video, it became clear that the story involved an elderly woman who, at the beginning of the novel, prevents the main character, Hai, from committing suicide by stopping him from jumping off a bridge in Gladness, CT. This woman, Grazina, is a Lithuanian immigrant in her early 80s, and living in relative poverty as she descends more deeply into dementia. Hai, himself a young immigrant from Vietnam, ends up serving as the caregiver for Grazina in her home. The two form an unlikely bond which, along with Hai's co-workers in a semi-fast food restaurant called "Home Market", covers the landscape of a what many reviewers have called the theme of found family. 

So, more on Grazina as a character. As the story takes place around 2011, Grazina recalls memories during World War II back in Lithuania, including confused, hallucination-like experiences of being entrenched in precarious scenarios of either battle or escape. Hai finds ways to sort of go along with this in order to redirect Grazina back to present day and either lucidity or sleep. There would be some interesting and challenging scenes for anyone who played Grazina in these states. The combination of illness and medication effect would almost require a sort of acting within the acting for any performer. It reminds me a bit of Violet Weston, and how Meryl has commented in interviews of how she was interested in what Violet's place was at any given moment in her pain cycle, and how that and the effect of drugs/medications would essentially define her mood. 

Grazina would likely be a lead character, as a good portion of the book is her interactions between her and Hai. There is also a heartbreaking series of scenes with her son and her son's family, which may be an indictment of American values as it pertains to caring for our elders. Hai is of course at the center of the story, and would likely be played by a twenty-something actor of Vietnamese descent. This role in itself would be a wonderful opportunity for any young performer, as would the gaggle of characters who would make up Hai's coworkers at Home Market. 

What would be the plausibility of this coming to fruition? Maybe low likelihood, but with the novel's visibility from it having been an Oprah book selection, as well as the fact that it has some enticing elements (strained family ties, themes related to the opioid epidemic, the aforementioned state of elder care) and roles for underrepresented characters (immigrants, Asian-Americans, gay characters, women over 70). As mentioned, Grazina is in her early 80s, so it may not be as likely for Meryl to do it like next year (and edit: I failed to mention when this went to post that I picture it working best as a limited series). But realistically, as long as it were clear that the story takes place in the early 2010s, she could do it anytime. It is far from a glamorous role, so I think Meryl would relish the transformation. And lord knows I'm a sucker for a new accent! 

P.S. Remember when Meryl sort of offhandedly mentioned at Cannes last year that she had just bought the rights to something that was in development? Yes, this was a full year before Gladness was even published, and I feel like there would have been something announced by now (especially with the Oprah interviews with Vuong), but sometimes there's buzz about new novels, the rights to which could be snatched up early. Regardless, maybe at the very least Meryl has her eye out for great stories that are ripe for the plucking. 

Let's keep our eyes on this one.