As film pedigrees go, it doesn't get much better than Doubt. It's an adaptation of a Pullitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play, being adapted for the screen and directed by its playwright, and it's got its eye on 17,000-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep and recent winner Philip Seymour Hoffman to star in it.
The story is about set in a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, where the strict disciplinarian, and nun, headmistress (Streep) accuses a popular priest (Hoffman) - and this is where it stops sounding like **Sister Act 3 **- of paedophilia. A young nun is caught between them in the turmoil that ensues, but she is yet to be cast. It's all set against the background of the introduction of the school's first black student, and the upheval in the Catholic church that followed the liberalising reforms of the 1950s, which all sounds about as interesting as root canal surgery, admittedly. But give it a chance: the play is smarter than a pocket square and raises very relevant questions in this age of priestly scandal.
It's already been produced onstage around the world, with Roman Polanski scheduled to direct the Paris production and the Broadway version still on tour, but it remains to be seen how well a 90-minute, one-act play that centres around a lengthy verbal battle between two religious types will play onscreen. With this cast, however, it's got a pretty good chance.
Uber-producer Scott Rudin is producing for Miramax Films, and shooting is due to start in New York on December 1, which gives Streep lots of time to finish work on Mamma Mia! (she's already wrapped Rendition and Lions For Lambs), and allows Hoffman to finish work on Synedoche, New York for Charlie Kaufman. He also has Sidney Lumet's Before The Devil Knows You're Dead and Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War, with Tom Hanks, coming up.