New Stephen Frears movie on the way

Michelle Pfeiffer and Stephen Frears re-team for the first time since 'Dangerous Liasons' with 'Cheri'

There were exciting rumours about a year ago that Stephen Frears was going to follow up his world-conquering award-magnet, ‘The Queen’ with a screen version of David Peace’s rousing fictionalised biography of Brian Clough, ‘The Damned United’.

Well, he's definitely not going to make that and is now set to put his steady directorial hand to a French period drama called ‘Cheri’, which is an adaptation of the 1920s Colette novel courtesy of Christopher Hampton, the man who gave us ‘Atonement’ and won an Academy Award for his previous collaboration with Frears, 1988’s ‘Dangerous Liaisons’.

Michelle Pfeiffer (who starred in ‘Dangerous Liaisons’) will rejoin Frears in the role of courtisan Lea de Lonval and will be given the on-screen task of wooing young lover Rupert Friend (‘Pride & Prejudice’), with Kathy Bates currently in negotiations to play his mother.

The project is currently in the pre-production stages and mooted to be released in cinemas in 2009.

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