Just last month, we reported on Jake Gyllenhaal considering the lead in Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallée’s next film, Demolition. Now we know who will likely be joining him at the top of the bill, with The Wrap bringing word that Naomi Watts is working out a deal to co-star.
Written by Bryan Sipe, the script focuses on a young investment banker (Gyllenhaal) who falls into an emotional disconnect after his wife dies. Deciding to tear his life apart to discover what went wrong, he becomes obsessed with the idea of destruction but eventually ends up meeting and befriending a single mother (Watts), who helps him to turn things around.
What has Watts interested is that the character is much more complicated than that basic synopsis might lead you to assume – she’s a pot-smoking customer service operative for a vending machine company whose device has eaten Gyllenhaal’s money, sending him into a rage. Despite an ongoing tryst with her boss, she starts to fall for the anguished customer, especially when she learns the depths of his situation. Vallée wants to make the film his next project, so he’s hoping the various deals work out.
Watts has several films on the way, including Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, comedy drama St. Vincent and the Divergent sequel Insurgent, in which she’s playing Evelyn, the leader of the Factionless.