Sunday, November 1, 2015

"The Good House" still in development?

As I mentioned I would yesterday, I'd like to comment on an article from Screen Daily that came out a couple days ago that mentions The Good House.  If you scroll down toward its end, you see they write that "Glen Basner's New York outfit is in development of The Good House, set to star Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro."

I concede that this is barely a mention, but the fact that it's being mentioned at all sparks ongoing questions about the film's possible production. Things haven't been looking good for this picture.  It's been about 27 months since it was first revealed that the book was going to be made into a film starring Streep and De Niro.  We all know that between then and now, Meryl joined Suffragette, Ricki and the Flash, Master Class and Florence Foster Jenkins.  All but one of these have come to fruition, but we also understand the special circumstances which prevented Master Class from getting made, namely the unexpected death of its director, Mike Nichols.

I maintain that The Good House still has life.  We know that Michael Cunningham was working on adapting Ann Leary's novel as early as June 2013.  After Roadshow announced in December last year that it had acquired a 33% stake in FillmNation, The Good House, along with The Founder, were the two films listed as funded for production.  We know The Founder has wrapped and will be released next fall.  If people think the delay on The Good House is the script being too difficult to adapt, I just can't imagine Cunningham didn't have enough already complete and satisfactory for producers to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down by as late as last year.  It may have gone through a few permutations, and they may still be fine-tuning it, but it seems reasonable to me that the "powers that be" still want it made.

Now we need a director.  We also need the two main stars to have open schedules.  If Meryl wanted an extended break after Florence, and there are still a few things they're working out in the script, it seems like the perfect opportunity to not rush the process and perhaps begin filming late 2015 or any time in 2016.  I know we get anxious without any definite film projects for Meryl, but we know more will come.  Even if she decided to take all of 2016 off from filming, we'd still likely only have a single calendar year where she didn't have a film out.  That's certainly not unheard of and it seems particularly unreasonable to attribute a furlough of this length to anything other than Streep's own wishes for a break.

3 comments:

  1. Absolutely, I am very glad she is taking a break and hopefully being selective about what she says yes to. Worse than having no forthcoming projects would become like De Niro or Sarandon and just seemingly say yes to any old project.

    I truly hope The Good House goes ahead and I am still holding a glimmer of hope for Master Class as well. It seemed like such a great project and a fitting return to TV.

    Let's hope something is confirmed over the next few months anyway, we already have a big film for 2016 in the bag so no need to panic...

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  2. Oh I hope she didn't make a break 2016 it's too long .. A few months okay but not a year !

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    1. She should take a leaf out of Nicole Kidman's book and come do a play in London's West End! It would be sensational..

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