Michelle Pfeiffer, after Avengers: Endgame, will star in Azazel Jacobs‘ French Exit. The film is a dark comedy based on the acclaimed novel by The Sisters Brothers author Patrick deWitt. It was reported last autumn that deWitt had already written the French Exit screenplay before the book was even printed.
Jacobs and deWitt already have a collaboration history together. deWitt wrote Jacobs’ 2011 movie Terri, and it was there that Jacobs gave star John C. Reilly a copy of The Sisters Brothers. Reilly loved the book, and proceeded to buy the film rights and produce the recently acclaimed adaptation.
In French Exit, Pfeiffer will play Frances Price, a widow and possessive mother living on the Upper East Side who is beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy, while her adult son Malcolm is in a permanent state of arrested development and is no help.
Frances also believes that the family’s ageing cat, Small Frank, houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social pariahs. With New York not working out, the three of them head for Paris, where things don’t exactly get much better.
Jacobs recently directed A24’s midlife crisis drama, The Lovers, and has previously excelled with his intimate mumblecore films. He has a knack of capturing the strange minutae of life, and French Exit sounds like the perfect project for him.
Pfeiffer is having a good run of projects. Outside of her MCU work, she also recently had silver screen roles in mother! and Murder On The Orient Express, as well as starring in the HBO movie The Wizard Of Lies alongside Robert De Niro. She’ll soon be seen in the Maleficent sequel, too.
With three Oscar nominations under her belt, Pfeiffer could understandably take it easy. But it’s exciting to see her step out of her comfort zone and take on a lead role in a daring indie movie. Financing still has to be put together for the film, but sources say those expected to be worked out.
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