Michelle Pfeiffer to star in 'French Exit'

The film is a dark comedy that hails from Azazel Jacobs (The Lovers) and is based on the acclaimed novel by Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers. Last fall, the Canadian newspaper the Times Colonist reported that deWitt had already written the screenplay for French Exit, which he finished even before advance reader copies of his book were printed. Now that’s confidence! It was deWitt who wrote Jacobs’ 2011 movie Terri, and it was Jacobs who gave Terri star John C. Reilly a copy of The Sisters Brothers, prompting Reilly to buy the film rights and produce the acclaimed film adaptation.

After Today host Hoda Kotb noted that Pfeiffer will star opposite Angelina Jolie in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, the actress said “I have something else that — it’s not 100 percent — but it’s something called French Exit, which I might be doing the end of summer.” The “might” in that sentence has more to do with the film’s financing than Pfeiffer’s desire to participate, but things are expected to work out on that front anyway.

Pfeiffer will play Frances Price, described as a tart widow, possessive mother and Upper East Side force of nature who is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son, Malcolm, is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development, like a young boy trapped in a man’s body. And then there’s the family’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social pariahs. With little left for them in New York, the three of them head to Paris, where things don’t get much better for them — in a darkly funny way, of course.