After the critical darling that was “Rachel Getting Married,” Jenny Lumet and Jonathan Demme are set to reunite on “Honeymoon With Harry,” a project that first came to light last fall.
Showbiz411 spoke to Lumet who confirmed that the duo are plotting a reteaming which will again see Lumet writing and Demme behind the camera. Paul Haggis wrote the original draft, based on a still-unpublished novel by Bart Baker, and sold it to New Line back in 2004. And while she doesn’t name the project to Friedman, last year trade publications confirmed that Lumet came on board to rewrite. The story is about an alcoholic who reforms his ways after falling in love with a girl, only to relapse after she dies shortly before their wedding. Drowning his sorrows on what would have been their honeymoon, he crosses paths with her father, who is there to scatter his daughter’s ashes on her favorite beach. Friedman does add that Lumet has taken it to her own father, veteran writer-director Sidney Lumet (who hasn’t been seen since 2007’s “Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead” and is reportedly facing health issues) to help “fix a problem in the second act of the script.”
Lumet and Demme’s first collaboration on the intimately shot study of two sisters, played to acclaim by Anne Hathaway and the criminally underrated Rosemarie DeWitt, featured at both Venice and the Toronto Film Festival catalyzing a run that ended up with Hathaway earning her first Oscar nomination.
Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper were initially attached the project last year, although it’s unknown if they’re still linked or have moved on — we’d guess it’ll depend on what the finished script looks like. We also hear that the hunt is on for the female lead as well. It’ll be interesting to see what the duo will conjure up now — neither party has done anything of note since ‘Rachel’ though Demme has an animated adaptation of Dave Egger‘s Post-Katrina novel “Zeitoun” in the works and was recently replaced by Kevin MacDonald on the long-gestating Bob Marley documentary — on which he himself was a replacement for Martin Scorsese. As for Lumet, she recently did an uncredited rewrite on the godawful Robert Pattinson vehicle “Remember Me” but wisely, that work is being kept off her IMDB resumé.
