Sound the remake klaxon! Another film is being marched to the special factory where Hollywood builds new versions of older titles. The latest subject is 1991 Julia Roberts thriller Sleeping With The Enemy.
In the original, Roberts plays the unhappy Laura Burney, who attempts to escape her miserable marriage and her obsessive, violent husband (Patrick Bergin) by faking a watery death. She travels to a small Southern town and takes on the quiet identity of Sara Waters. As she begins to enjoy her new-found life and freedom, she falls in love with her down-to-earth next-door neighbor, only to find out that her crazed husband has discovered her deception.
Producer Damian Jones is developing the new film with Fox Searchlight, hiring director Nia DaCosta (already also attached to the new Candyman, which has just found its lead) to oversee it.
While the 1991 release was a box office hit, it isn't exactly seen as a critical success, so perhaps there is scope to make something more intriguing. There are no details online yet about the remake.
Also mentioned in Deadline's report is Jones aiming to make a movie based on Tony Award-winner One Man, Two Governors, which saw James Corden pick up the trophy. The farce, about the mixed fortunes of a man who finds himself employed by two very different bosses, one of whom is a notorious gangster, is receiving the film adaption treatment from Uncle writer/director Oli Refson, with the show's creator Richard Bean on as a producer. We'll have to wait and see whether Corden would take time out of his talk show schedule to make this, though he has fit other movies (admittedly not leads, aside from voice-only work on Peter Rabbit) around his commitments in the past.
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