Knocking around for years, attracting a wealth of talent including P.J. Hogan, Hugh Grant, Ben Kingsley, Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Aniston all attached at various points, the Coen Brothers‘ scribed remake of the Michael Caine/Shirley MacLaine 1966 caper film “Gambit” is moving ahead full throttle.
Deadline reports that Cameron Diaz is now attached to star in the film, joining Colin Firth who was linked to the project last fall. The plot has been appropriately Coen-ized as it follows “a London art curator (Firth) who plans to con a wealthy collector into buying a phony Monet painting. He enlists a Texas steer roper (Diaz) to pose as a woman whose grandfather liberated the painting at the end of WWII.” In the original the parts are for a cat burglar and waitress to run the scam, but we really like the update the Coens have brought to the story.
Funding has been an issue for the picture in the past but the appropriately named Crime Scene Pictures are backing the film with FilmNation handling sales at the European Film Market next month. Everything is on track for the previously reported production start date of May in London, with Michael Hoffman (“The Last Station“) directing.
