Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton have had long careers, both of them have won Oscars, and both of them are so popular and prolific that you'd have to assume they crossed paths at some point, right? Nope. The two will be filming their first movie together this year-- and even better, they'll be getting romantically involved to do it.
Myriad Pictures announced the two will star in Richard Loncraine’s comedy Life Itself, and they’ll play a long-married couple, so they’re really going to get some screen time together in a plot that sounds more enjoyable than most of the feel-good projects that Keaton usually gets herself into. The film is Loncraine’s first since 2009’s My One and Only, and he’s reteaming with that film’s screenwriter Charlie Peters (3 Men and a Little Lady), who adapted it from the much-loved novel Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment.
A subdued screwball comedy, Life Itself covers one weekend in the lives of Alex (Freeman) and Ruth (Keaton), an older New York couple who feel they are getting too old for their apartment of 40 years. They’re enticed to sell for financial reasons, and then a series of bad circumstances occur, which allows them to reflect on what they’re leaving behind. I’m not part of an aging New York couple, but I still get a tad nostalgic for places I’ve lived in the past, and the times I shared with people. The key will be keeping the schmaltz on the ground floor.
Keaton, who just had The Big Wedding hit theaters not long ago, will next be seen teaming with Michael Douglas for the rom-com And So It Goes. And Freeman has the magical heist flick Now You See Me coming up, and will be in the “please let this be a classic” older man comedy Last Vegas.
No word on a production schedule for Life Itself.
