With David Frankel having taken up the directing job, one of Will Smith’s new films can start building its cast. Helen Mirren is in talks to join Collateral Beauty.
The drama finds Smith as a New York advertising executive who suffers a massive personal tragedy. Shocked at how quickly his life is going into a tailspin, his colleagues hatch an unorthodox plan to help him, only to see it backfire in unexpected ways. Variety’s report offers no details on who Mirren would play, and since she’s only in early talks, there’s no guarantee that she’ll join the film.
Still, her casting would be a boon for a drama that finally seems to be on a more solid track after some actor and director changes. Once boasting Hugh Jackman and Rooney Mara in the cast with Me And Earl And The Dying Girl’s Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directing, the film now has Frankel and Smith attached, preparing to work from Allan Loeb’s script. The cameras should be rolling early next year in the Big Apple, but it has yet to lock in an exact release date.
Mirren will be back on our screens in Trumbo on February 5, and follows that with drone thriller Eye In The Sky on April 8.