Hot on the heels of news that James Gandolfini is setting up a new series on premium US cable outlet HBO comes word that another high-profile project – both in terms of its source material and names involved – is bubbling away at the channel, with Anthony Hopkins interested in leading off an adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections.
Greenberg writer/director Noah Baumbach is one of the other main driving forces behind the project, looking to turn Franzen’s acclaimed 2001 tome into a series. The book nabbed all the awards and was the subject of plenty of literary buzz when it arrived, and is the chronicle of the trials and tribulations of an elderly couple and their three grown children across several decades.
So far, Hopkins has only expressed an interest: there’s no deal in place. But if he did sign on, he’d be playing family head Alfred, a man whose own head (or rather, his brain) is beginning to fail him.
Scott Rudin, who has worked with Baumbach on the likes of Greenberg and Margot at the Wedding, is on to produce and according to Deadline, HBO is close to ordering a pilot based on Baumbach’s script, co-written with Franzen. We can see the appeal for the channel – it could be another complex, multilayered family drama along the lines of one of HBO’s earlier hits, Six Feet Under…