Apple continues to secure some big names in the hopes of giving their nascent streaming service a boost. Having secured the Will Smith thriller Emancipation and the Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio/Robert De Niro film Killers Of The Flower Moon, the company have now added Julia Roberts to their roster.
Roberts has signed on to star in an upcoming mystery series titled The Last Thing He Told Me, which is based on Laura Dave‘s upcoming novel of the same name. Roberts will executive produce alongside Reese Witherspoon, who has already worked with Apple TV+ on The Morning Show.
Dave’s novel follows a woman who forms an unexpected relationship with her 16-year-old stepdaughter while searching for the truth about why her husband has mysteriously disappeared. Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine optioned the book and will serve as the studio alongside 20th Television.
Apple reportedly secured the project in a competitive bidding situation and has given it a straight-to-series order. Dave will co-create the show and adapt her book alongside her husband Josh Singer, who previously won an Oscar for writing Spotlight.
Roberts has actually already had some success on TV recently, having starred in Amazon’s Homecoming, and she’ll collaborate again with Sam Esmail, who directed season one of that show, on the upcoming series Gaslit, which is a modern take on the Watergate scandal focusing on untold stories and forgotten characters of the time.
However Roberts isn’t totally abandoning the silver screen. She’s set to star alongside Denzel Washington in the Netflix movie Leave The World Behind, which will also be directed by Esmail.
This sounds like an intriguing series, and making this kind of psychological crime thriller is a good bet by Apple, as those shows have proven popular and usually get people talking. Just look at the The Undoing, which just concluded, and recent shows like Sharp Objects. Apple will hope that the combination of a popular genre and a big name can snag some more subscribers.
This is just the latest project Apple and Hello Sunshine are collaborating on. Witherspoon’s company is also developing the Octavia Spencer-led series Truth Be Told, and another upcoming psychological thriller series titled Surface, which will star Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
#Peace.Love.TheLastThingHeToldMe
