Actress Uma Thurman poses for photographers on the red carpet for the film Nymphomaniac at the International Film Festival Berlinale in Berlin, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2014.
Joel Ryan/Invision/APUma Thurman is set to star in The Brits Are Coming, a broad comedy about an eccentric, no-good British couple who flee to Los Angeles and plot a jewel theft.
Kristin Chenoweth will also star in the movie, which Cassian Elwes, filmmaker J.C. Chandor, Robert Ogden Barnum and Will Clevinger are producing.
James Oakley, a protege of Chandor’s, will direct. Oakley’s other directing credits include The Devil You Know, starring Rosamund Pike, Lena Olin and Jennifer Lawrence. Oakley is set to start shooting The Brits Are Coming in July from a script he co-wrote with Alex Michaelides. Further casting on the project is underway.
Fortitude International, the foreign sales company founded by Barnum, Nadine de Barros and Daniel Wagner, is representing international rights and will launch the project to buyers at the Cannes film market, which is now underway.
The storyline follows Harriet (Thurman) and Peter Fox, who travel to L.A. to avoid paying a large debt to a notorious gangster after a failed poker game. With the gangster hot on their trail, the pair schemes to win back the money by executing a jewel theft operation involving Peter’s ex-wife and her new husband, Gabriel. Chenoweth will play Gabriel’s pill-popping assistant, Gina.
“Uma Thurman is a gifted actress who excels in all genres and will showcase her comedic skills in The Brits Are Coming, a hugely entertaining and hilarious script. Kristin Chenoweth is the perfect counterpart given her undeniable wit and charm which has been on display across television, film and stage productions,” said Barnum.
The Brits Are Coming is the latest collaboration between Fortitude and Elwes, who worked together on Daughter of God, starring Keanu Reeves. That film is in post.
Thurman — who turned up at Cannes a year ago to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Quentin Tarantino‘s Pulp Fiction — was last in theaters in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1. She’ll next be seen this fall in The Weinstein Co.’s Adam Jones opposite Bradley Cooper, Jamie Dornan and Sienna Miller. Her latest television outing was the NBC miniseries The Slap.
Chenoweth’s numerous television, film and theater credits include Pushing Daisies, Glee and Wicked. She’s currently appearing on Broadway in On the Twentieth Century, for which she has earned a Tony nomination.
Thurman is represented by Untitled Entertainment; Chenoweth, by ICM and Untitled Entertainment.
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