After not coming out with a film in 2010, apparently Judi Dench is making up for lost time. Set to come out with four movies this year (Jane Eyre, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, My Week With Marilyn and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides), Dench has been taking a lot of meetings recently and has confirmed involvement in the next James Bond film, in which she will return as M, and the Clint Eastwood J. Edgar Hoover bio-pic. But she's not done yet.
Variety reports that the Oscar winner, as well as Michelle Monaghan, is joining the cast of Better Living Through Chemistry. The film is set to be written and directed by David Posamentier and Geoff Moore and already has Jeremy Renner and Jennifer Garner attached to star. Renner will play a small town pharmacist who gets caught up in a wild, prescription drug-fueled affair with a trophy wife (Garner). Wanting to be together, the two then hatch a plan to kill her husband. The roles to be played by Dench and Monaghan are unspecified.
I've always wanted to see a proper adaptation of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, but neither versions - including the 1946 film with John Garfield and Lana Turner and the 1981 film with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange - have ever been willing to go far enough to capture the story's more graphic content. While this project is based on an original script, it sounds like it has a lot in common with Cain's story, so I can only hope that they will be willing to push the envelope.
