While playing a variety of baddies, in equally numerous wigs in The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer's forthcoming "Cloud Atlas" might be a fun lark, it's not the kind of role that pays the bills for Hugh Grant. He's a romcom man, and when he's charmingly befuddled, audiences tend to fork over their money to see him haplessly stutter his way through another one of life's romantic adventures.
Grant will reteam with writer/director Marc Lawrence ("Two Weeks Notice," "Music and Lyrics," "Did You Hear About the Morgans?") for their fourth collaboration, an as-yet untitled movie. Set for some reason in 1998, Grant will play a washed up Academy Award-winning screenwriter, who now teaches at a small East Coast college (what an injurious fall, right?). But his world gets turned upside down, as it always does, when he falls for a single mom who is going back to school.
These movies are all painfully predictable, and yet people love 'em, and this looks like one you can just book a date with in advance for your Mom and favorite Aunt. It says something about Lawrence and the anonymity of his work that despite three Grant movies, and two Sandra Bullock vehicles (both "Miss Congeniality" flicks), there is still nothing to denote "A Marc Lawrence Film" except inspired mediocrity. But it's digestible stuff that sells, we suppose. Hugh Grant Rom Com Project #A834723-P7X will shoot in April. [Deadline]
