Now that Hugh Grant and writer/director Marc Lawrence have officially decided to join forces for what will be their fourth romantic-comedy collaboration, they’re starting to lock down actors for other roles in the new, as-yet-untitled movie. According to The Wrap, Marisa Tomei is in negotiations to sign on.
The film will focus on Ray Michaels (Grant), a charming, handsome Englishman who is the toast of Hollywood in the late 1980s. A successful screenwriter, he has Tinseltown at his feet after winning an Oscar for Best Screenplay.
But the fickle finger of fortune decides to mess with him, and 15 years later, he’s creatively washed-up, flat broke and utterly unemployed. Needing to make money, he takes the only job he can dig up, teaching writing at a small college on the East coast.
Figuring it’ll be a chance to use whatever fleeting fame he has to impress college girls, he doesn’t bet on finding romance with a single mother (Tomei) who has gone back to school.
Assuming she locks in a deal, Tomei will be working with Grant and Lawrence next spring in New York. She’ll next be on screen with Billy Crystal in the family comedy Parental Guidance. That one arrives on December 26. Grant’s latest, Cloud Atlas, is out on February 22 over here.