Good news for "The Good House"?

Variety has revealed that Roadshow Films has purchased a 33% stake in FilmNation, the company that was planning on producing The Good House with Meryl and Robert De Niro.  Nary a word has been reported about the development of this project in over a year.  I've been bugging Joe for a while now whining that I haven't heard any news about whether it was happening, assuming it had been put to pasture for the unforeseeable future.

Well, that still may happen, but a glimmer of hope shines through when a reputable source is quoted as saying "The first two movies scheduled to begin production next year under the new financing structure are The Founder with John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) directing a biopic of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc; and The Good House starring Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro and based on Ann Leary’s book."

Meryl recently said in an interview that after filming Florence Foster Jenkins next May, she won't be doing anything for a while.  Well, what's a while?  A year?  Six months?  If Florence is wrapped by July, it's absolutely possible that Meryl would be ready to film by September or October.  I don't imagine either of these films having particularly grueling shooting schedules, and she won't even have to learn a new language or how to play an instrument.

Fingers crossed this actually does happen. I really enjoyed the book and would look forward to Meryl teaming with De Niro in a great story.  Although I love when she learns challenging new skills for her roles, that of Hildy Good won't have any "gimmicky" aspects to her, i.e a major accent (maybe slightly Bostonian),  physical skill or greatly altered appearance.  Critics get too distracted by those things (even though they add to the performance), and it irritates me that the marvelous performance Meryl gives is then unnecessarily denounced.

Here's hopin'.