Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci sound like such a perfect on-screen pairing, it's a wonder they haven't worked together before… until now, at least. They’ve just added Ian McEwan adaption The Children Act to a newfound union that’s kicking off with Beauty And The Beast next year.
McEwan’s 2014 novel is a morality tale and marital drama set in the world of family law. Thompson plays High Court judge Fiona Maye, a compassionate arbiter whose workload has caused fractures in her marriage to Tucci’s American professor.
Maye is confronted with a hellish moral puzzle when she’s asked to rule on the cast of a clever young man (Dunkirk’s Fionn Whitehead) who is refusing the blood transfusion that may save his life. The puzzle? He’s still three months from his 18th birthday. The judge can, if she chooses to, force him into the operation.
“I’m thrilled to be directing these brilliant actors in this powerful story by one of our greatest living novelists,” says director Richard Eyre (Notes On A Scandal) in a statement. McEwan, himself, will be adaption his own novel, as he did with The Innocent and the upcoming On Chesil Beach.
The Children Act gets underway in London in mid-October.