After making us laugh as the Pirate Captain in The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists and breaking boundaries by playing a variety of very different characters in Cloud Atlas, it appears Hugh Grant is returning to rom-com turf. Grant has signed on to work with writer-director Marc Lawrence on a new, untitled romantic comedy.
Lawrence and Grant have collaborated three times already, on Two Weeks Notice, Music And Lyrics, and, most recently, Did You Hear About The Morgans?
This new film will find Grant as Ray Michaels, who 15 years ago was the toast of Hollywood. An Oscar-winning screenwriter, he was successful, beloved and about as famous as writers ever get to be in Tinsel Town. Fast forward a decade and a half and he’s broke, divorced and depressed.
To keep the financial wolf from the door, he takes a job teaching scriptwriting at a small East Coast college with the lure of easy money and easily impressed young female academics. What he doesn’t bargain on is falling for a single mother who has gone back to school.
It doesn’t sound like hugely challenging stuff for Grant, but we’re certain he’ll bring his usual brand of charm to it.
Cloud Atlas is set to arrive on February 22 and Grant is also still attached to the long-developing third instalment of the Bridget Jones’s Diary series, assuming that happens any time soon.