Director Stephen Frears’ next feature will focus on an icon of the Golden Age of Hollywood: more details here.
Stephen Frears has been focusing his big screen energies almost exclusively on period projects for the past few years, with 2016’s Florence Foster Jenkins and 2019’s Victoria and Abdul. Now, he’s following in the footsteps of Bill Condon’s terrific 1998 film Gods and Monsters (which followed an elderly James Whale), by following an iconic film director in his later years. The director in question is Billy Wilder, who helmed iconic comedies like Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, as well as dramas like Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard.
Billy Wilder and Me will see Christoph Waltz take on the title role. It will follow Wilder in the summer of 1977, when an innocent young woman begins working for the famed director and his screenwriter Iz Diamond on a Greek island during the filming of Fedora. When she follows Wilder to Germany to continue the shoot, she finds herself joining him on a journey of memory into the heart of his family history.
The film will reunite Frears with screenwriter Christopher Hampton, with whom he previously collaborated on Dangerous Liaisons and Cheri. Producer Jeremy Thomas is also onboard, with who Frears made The Hit in 1984.
Waltz commented on the project, saying that “Billy Wilder said ‘You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.’ A Stephen Frears movie from a Christopher Hampton script produced by Jeremy Thomas should do the trick for me.”
Production will commence in Greece next year.
THR
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