Thank you to Anonymous for sharing this info.
In an interview with Spanish-language newspaper, El País, late last month, Sigourney Weaver was specifically asked about Useful Idiots and whether or not she was indeed going to make the film with Meryl. Her response:
Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. But hopefully we'll have another chance.
I take that to mean that specifically, Useful Idiots is not going to happen (at least not with the two of them), but that she hopes she'll have another/different chance to work with Meryl.
At least we know now. The movie, set to be directed by Joseph Cedar, was apparently set for filming this past winter. That time came and went without anything happening. Hard to know why for sure. This is not a new situation with Meryl (or any actor, for that matter). Projects are announced, directors are attached, maybe even a co-star or two are mentioned as being "in-talks" or are actually signed. And then nothing. Knowing that it was rumored to film in Canada starting in March, and that Martin Short's daughter passed away in February, maybe Meryl simply dropped out to be able to spend time with him. That seems reasonable and plausible. Maybe the financing just never fully got together, but for some reason I kind of doubt that, knowing the way Weaver had been quoted last fall about them doing the movie in early 2026.
Oh well. I'm optimistic about The Corrections getting underway in the fall. It'll be exciting to get some casting news hopefully soon. No idea on whether or not the Joni Mitchell biopic will move forward. In theory, I imagine Meryl could squeeze that in from August through October, but I feel we would've heard more of that by now. Cameron Crowe had been quoted last fall that he planned to film it in 2026. As I often say, time will tell. That project I think would still be viable if they waited until 2027 to film.
The promotion for The Devil Wears Prada 2 was fixed for April, so filming for Useful Idiots should have started in January, or at the very latest early February — otherwise they couldn't have finished shooting. In early February, there were rumors of filming in Toronto in March, but that probably wasn’t principal photography; the main shoot was in New York. The premise for all this is that the film would have been shot in January or early February. And Martin’s daughter passed away on February 23 — the project’s problems and halt likely occurred before that date. I think the issue was likely with the production side. According to the productionlist website, several new production companies had joined compared to when the project was announced in November — possibly the production negotiations fell apart before filming even started. If Meryl had dropped out of the project and caused the collaboration to fail, I don’t think Weaver would have phrased it that way. Productionlist was still updating the project info on April 28, which means it was still alive at that time.
ReplyDeleteYou're totally right regarding the promotion of DWP2. Had they wanted to get this in before April, they would've had to have been underway by Jan or early Feb.
DeleteThe project hadn’t started filming by early February shows there were already problems. Martin’s daughter died by suicide on February 23, so I don’t think that event affected the project.It’s probably not the actors’ issue.
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