Following her recent Best Acress Oscar win, Julianne Moore is in early talks to headline a new film entitled Can You Ever Forgive Me, according to Variety. The project, being developed at Fox Searchlight with Enough Said director Nicole Holofcener on board to write and direct, is an adaptation of Lee Israel’s 2008 memoir. This would mark the first major role for Moore since winning the Best Actress Academy Award for the Alzheimer’s drama Still Alice this year.
Israel’s memoir focuses on her life as a once-celebrated journalist and biographer who, after falling on hard times, concocted a literary scheme of forging the letters of deceased writers and celebrities as a way of making ends meet. For a while, the scheme worked, as many were fooled by Israel’s realistic counterfeit letters from luminaries such as Dorothy Parker and Noël Coward. However, suspicions started to arise and the FBI began to take notice. Israel was eventually arrested after forging letters for upwards of a year. She passed away late last year.
While production on Can You Ever Forgive Me appears to be fairly well off into the future, the filmography of Holofcener seems to be simpatico with a premise like this. Holofcener is known for acclaimed original films including Walking and Talking (1996), Lovely & Amazing (2001), Please Give (2010), and Enough Said (2013), which all offer amusingly swift comedic and dramatic perspectives on complicated (and mainly female) characters. This would mark her first adaptation, though Holofcener has also established herself in recent years as a respected director of television shows including Parks and Recreation and Six Feet Under.
If Moore signs on to the project, it would follow what has been a significantly busy couple of years for the acclaimed actress. Aside from winning nearly every major award this past season for Still Alice, Moore also earned rave reviews for her Cannes Film Festival-winning performance in David Cronenberg’s Hollywood noir Maps to the Stars (which opened in U.S. theaters in February) and will be seen in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, the final film in the hugely successful franchise, this November. Moore also stars opposite Oscar-nominated actress Ellen Page in the gay rights drama Freeheld and the comedy Maggie’s Plan , starring Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha), both of which may arrive in theaters later this year.
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