"What's on Netflix" is reporting that The Corrections is set to film in November. Not a lot of new info, but the report came from Production Weekly, which included a detailed synopsis:
After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert (Streep) is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain on an affair with a married man – or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home. Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, The Corrections brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.
If this news is true (not a lot of reason to expect it's not), great to see that it's moving forward! And of course very interested to learn of casting news sooner than later. Curious to see if Meryl somehow squeezes in the Joni Mitchell biopic before. I'm guessing not.
In 2020, I completed a year-long recasting project with my entry on Frances McDormand's Academy Award-winning performance in Nomadland. I followed it up a couple years later with my similarly themed supporting project. I had always intended to continue on with entries for each year, but I wanted to give things some time to breathe. So here I am, exactly five years later, to provide my updated list. I'll be posting an entry every Monday until I've completed recasting lead roles from 2021-2025, and supporting roles from 2023-2025.
My selection for 2021 has been one that I've had in mind pretty much since it was released. Mass is a chamber piece by American Fran Kranz in his directorial debut. The film follows a meeting between two couples who get together to discuss, question, and hopefully find a way to heal in the aftermath of their sons'deaths. The tricky part is, one of the sons was murdered in a school shooting by the other couple's sons. Right off the bat, it's a difficult concept and scenario, right up Meryl's alley.
The role I've specifically chosen to recast is Ann Dowd's role of Linda, the mother of the shooter, who subsequently took his own life after the shootings. As always, my intention with imagining recasting Meryl in the role is not to impugn Dowd's work. She is absolutely brilliant in the movie and I have no way of knowing if I'd prefer Meryl to her or anyone else (or in any other film). It's just fun to imagine, the same way I enjoy seeing different performers cast in the same play or opera. As an aside, it's always been a bit perplexing that people tend to get a little antagonized at the suggestion of someone wanting to see other actors in previously cast parts. We do it (and enjoy or even crave it) in other mediums. Why should film or TV be any different?
Anyway, I rewatched the movie this week for the first time since it came out. I remember enjoying it and being very impressed by both the screenplay and acting performances. I have to say, I was even more impressed the second time around. Talk about tackling difficult topics! Dowd is partnered by Reed Birney, who plays the perpetrators father. The parents of said victim are portrayed by Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton. Six years have passed since the tragic shootings, but emotions are still raw, as the couples meet in a church basement to chat.
I wish I could find a more lengthy clip of one of Dowd's monologues, but alas, no luck. You get a sense of what the back and forth is like. The conversation touches on gun violence of course, the politics surrounding access to firearms, parenting, and mental health. Compelling arguments and questions are raised by all performers (who by the way are all exceptional in their respective roles), but for me, the crux of what all it came down to, from a personal level, is that the parents of the victim just wanted to have a place to put their pain. The way I experienced it in watching the movie, was that they wanted so badly to hear from the shooter's parents that there was a clear, identifiable reason of how or where they had gone wrong as parents. Then they could have an answer, a living culprit, an object for their anger and emptiness. The trouble is, there probably wasn't any one thing the parents of the shooter did that was much different from what any other parent who loved their son would've done. And, possibly, they did more than most parents would do to tackle any red flags they encountered about their son's behavior. That's what's so maddening and painful about it, I think, for the parents of the victim. Maybe it wasn't preventable, as far as the behavior of the shooter's parents was concerned.
Ultimately, we get to see what looks like some catharsis and forgiveness, when Plimpton's character shares after all their discussion that she though (paraphrasing) that she'd lose her son if she forgave the shooter's parents. Wow! But that she realized this wasn't the case, and the anger and resentment, and her desire for the other parents to be punished began to lift.
The film received overwhelmingly positive reviews, with a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 81 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim." I realize that all of Dowd's recognition came in the form of nominations in the Supporting Actress category, but I think it's totally reasonable for the four main characters in this movie to be considered lead. Realistically, if Streep had been in the film, it might've actually been easier for Plimpton to get more noms in supporting, as they would've put Meryl, the more seasoned actor and bigger name, in lead.
Meryl Streep and Martin Short were photographed at a restaurant in London very recently. Not much more to say than what the headline suggests. We know that the two are (likely) a couple, and that the sixth and upcoming season of Hulu's Only Murders in the Building is set to take place at least partly in London this year. Thus, it makes sense that they're in London for the time being to shoot!
No official word that I've seen, but it makes sense that they'd film for a couple months with the season coming out later this year. That would a bit of a quicker turnaround than in recent seasons, as they've usually filmed earlier in the year with the season being released fourth quarter. Maybe they'll push this season's release to early 2027. I honestly could barely care less. The best of the show seems like it's behind us, and I would love to see Meryl in new projects.
Multiple sources are reporting that The Devil Wears Prada 2 opened to an impressive $77 million domestic box office total. Couple that with another $156 million internationally, and the film is already at $233 million. Evidently 75% of the moviegoers were female. My guess was that another 20% were gay men. Regardless of who it was, the movie made a very impressive total by any standard, much less for one essentially led by women, and in particular one woman who is almost 77.
This was Meryl's biggest movie opening of her career. That's exciting! And as I've mentioned a handful of times before, I hope it just bolsters future projects for her, assuming they're out there and that she's interested. We'll keep our eyes peeled each week to see if the sky is the limit for Prada's box office numbers. I imagine Mother's Day coming up this weekend is a natural boost for ladies to swing by a theater together.
A couple of days ago, Netflix announced that they are pushing Greta Gerwig's upcoming Narnia film to 2027. A lot of details came out of the announcement, including that the official title is Narnia: The Magician's Nephew. The Magician's Nephew was the sixth of seven books in C.S. Lewis's Narnia series, and it serves as a prequel to the events of all the others. Meryl name was officially included in the cast list, and the project is now listed under her "credits" tag on her IMDbPro page.
They're also doing a wide theatrical release, opening on February 12, with it being made available to stream on Netflix on April 2. The book's tagline from the article:
The book is set a 1,000 years before the events of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and focuses on the lion Aslan's creation of the magical world of Narnia.
Previous reports have suggested that Meryl is in fact Aslan. A lot of people are very skeptical about Streep in any way being the character is Aslan, presumably because it's historically written as a male (and a male lion, at that). But if Gerwig is doing it "her way," and if the C.S. Lewis Estate is on board in producing, I can't imagine it's going to be something so out of left field so as to alienate fans of the books. Time will tell, as always. Knowing that the character is a lion, we don't know if we'll even see Meryl as herself in the movie, or if it'll be a voice-only performance. If that latter is the case, I'm much less interested, although I'll still see it. It would be cool if we actually get to see her act in the film.
I suspect that this is going to be another big box-office draw, and knowing that it's now opening in early 2027, it spreads things out nicely. Maybe we'll get a teaser this summer and we'll get a better sense of what Meryl's participation will look like. In the meantime, I might read the book.
It has been almost five years since I've done a review on a Meryl Streep film. I'd forgotten that 2021's Don't Look Up had a limited theatrical release before it being streamed on Netflix. I had gone to the movie and drove home through a snowstorm. Oh the lengths I go. Last night was definitely less eventful weather-wise. And so, as I like to do for Meryl premieres, I joined my friend Scooter and his partner Joe for a screening of the much anticipated sequel to 2006's blockbuster movie, The Devil Wears Prada.
I get annoyed when people use the word "iconic" to describe every single thing that is remotely good or has been around for more than five years. But using the term for the original Prada is actually appropriate. The lines and looks from the movie have so cemented themselves into the cultural zeitgeist, that to this day, most movie-goers will know what you mean if you snootily whisper "that's all" or label anything blue as "cerulean." The film unexpectedly made a lot of money, earned Meryl and Oscar nomination, and opened a series of doors for her in her late fifties that led to one of the best decades of screen performances any actor has ever delivered.
With that comes enormous expectations for the quality of a sequel. Rumblings began shortly after the first movie about trying to recapture the magic. Streep and her co-stars have said in interviews during their global press tour recently that the timing and/or script had never felt right. Until now.
Twenty years after the original, The Devil Wears Prada 2 finds Miranda Priestly (Streep) still at the top of Runway magazine. But in an age where print media is drawing its last breath, the company's ad-drawing power isn't on the unshakable ground it used to be. Couple that with bad press related to running a piece that failed to vet a brand that uses sweatshop labor, and Miranda's grip on the company, and a big promotion she's seeking, hang in the balance.
I'm going to pause for a second to say that I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the plot. For one thing, I find it tedious, and secondly, anyone reading this is likely not going to need a big recap. But suffice it to say that Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), recently fired from her job as a journalist, is hired at Runway as the features editor to improve the magazine's image with a series of well-written articles. Still desperate for ad dollars, Miranda and her right-hand man, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), seek advertising dollars from Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) a former assistant at Runway who is now an executive at luxury brand, Dior.
Things improve for the magazine when Andy lands a "holy grail" interview with the super rich ex of a tech billionaire, only for Miranda to miss out on her seemingly in-the-bag promotion when her boss, Irv, dies at his own birthday party. Irv's son is a stereotypical bro who plans to gut the budget of Runway, so Andy and Emily concoct a plan for Emily's boyfriend (played by a hilarious Justin Theroux) to buy Runway and keep Miranda at the helm. Only problem is that Emily planned to fire Miranda after her boyfriend buys the magazine so that she can run it herself. Then Miranda and Andy hatch a plan which ends up in the aforementioned high-profile interviewee beating Emily and her boyfriend to the punch in not only buying Runway, but the entire publishing conglomerate that owns Runway, Elias-Clarke. Oh, and this "ex" who bought the company just happened to be the former wife of Emily's insufferable boyfriend. Miranda gets her big promotion, Andy stays on at Runway, she and Emily sort of become friends, and we learn that it was Nigel who got Andy the job as features editor at Runway in the first place.
Whew. My first reaction was just that I was happy to be seeing Meryl in a movie again, especially one that revisits such a special character. That has a downside too, however, as I, like I imagine many of us, have an idea in our minds of what Miranda and the rest of the cast should be like or stay like. Miranda 2.0 seemed a little lighter, a little hammier, a little more beat down than in the original. I have to remind myself that it would be dull if Meryl played her the exact same way she did twenty years ago. People live lives, they have experiences, they get older, they gain (some?) perspective. It was probably a tricky undertaking for the production for how to provide fans enough throwbacks to the original while still making it fresh. The good news is that in focusing the story essentially around the plight of journalists and journalism, the film felt fresh and like it had something worthwhile to say beyond bitchy one-liners and monologues about how fashion is more important than we might think.
The main cast was fantastic. They all felt honest to their original characters while still showcasing some level of change. All the celebrity cameos were small enough that it didn't become distracting or feel too gimmicky. The scenes were beautifully shot, particularly the sequences in Milan. I commented after the movie that the sequel was more fast-paced and included what felt like a lot more scenes than the original. This seemed to fit with the way we take in media these days, where many of us can barely focus more than a few seconds on anything before scrolling to the next page or simply tuning out.
My biggest takeaway from this film has pretty much already been shared in previous posts. I didn't want it to be a panned disaster. I'm not one who longs for sequels or repeats when it comes to Meryl's acting career. He recent work in Only Murders in the Building, and the upcoming possibilities of a third go-around for Mamma Mia! and Big Little Lies don't excite me. The very genesis of my enormous admiration and interest in Meryl and her work lies in the litany of varied characters she regularly and consistently portrays for us all. Not that she can't and doesn't do an exceptional job in advancing or developing characters she in any way repeats. And I'm of course thrilled that the box office total and favorable reviews for Prada 2 can only aid in getting things she'd be interested in involving herself in green-lit. But my thrill after a night out to see Meryl in a new movie is ever so slightly dulled by the fact that for the most part, I went in having a very good idea of exactly what I would be getting.
Deadline is reporting that The Devil Wears Prada 2 is on track to earn upwards of $180 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Domestic predictions put it at $73-80 million. That's a lot of money, and while it's a sequel, it's rather staggering for a leading lady who will turn 77 in two months.
I hate to harp on the age thing, but it really is remarkable. Not unlike the somewhat unexpected success of the original movie back in 2006, we just don't see female-driven films as consistently at the top of the box office, much less those led by women over 55. Also like the last film, I hope that the financial and possibly critical success of the sequel (the review embargo is lifted later today) will, as director Michael Hoffman (The Last Station) was quoted as saying, will render Meryl "besieged with offers."
The scripts for which she could realistically star are likely fewer than twenty years ago, but maybe not. Perhaps some of them are just sitting in a drawer somewhere waiting to be green-lit when the right star decides to lend her box-office clout to the project. It's exciting to look forward to that possibility. Because like you all know, I most enjoy when we get to see Meryl in new and complex roles.
Americans can already see the movie tomorrow (April 30). Due to my own personal schedule, I'll be attending "opening night" on Friday. Expect my review to be posted by the next morning.
