Clooney, Zeta-Jones Find "Cruelty"
Source: yahoo.comO brother, is George Clooney a modern-day Cary Grant?
The former ER hunk--who has costarred with such A-list leading ladies as Julia Roberts, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Lopez--will next be steaming up the screen opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones in Intolerable Cruelty, a new black comedy by those inscrutable Coen brothers.
According to Daily Variety, Clooney will, appropriately enough, star as a womanizing Beverly Hills divorce lawyer who skillfully saves a male client from his gold-digging ex-wife (Zeta-Jones), even though the husband was the cheating party. The ex-missus decides to seek revenge on the lawyer and take back the fortune he made off the divorce, but the plan is complicated when the two become romantically entangled.
Per tradition, Joel Coen will cowrite and direct Cruelty, while brother Ethan will serve in his usual cowriter-producer role. The duo's latest feature, The Man Who Wasn't There, starring Billy Bob Thornton as an existential barber, is in theaters now.
Cruelty will reportedly combine elements of the Coen brothers' darkly comic neo-noir thrillers like Blood Simple with the old-fashioned glamour pictures of Hollywood's past (like the Howard Hawks' films in which bitter rivals fall in love).
Zeta-Jones will segue into Cruelty as soon as she completes her starring role opposite Richard Gere and Renée Zellweger in Miramax's big-screen version of the Tony-winning musical Chicago, due to start shooting next month.
This will be Clooney's second feature for the Coen brothers, having starred in last year's Depression-era comedy, O Brother, Where Art Thou? He'll been seen next opposite Roberts in director Steven Soderbergh's all-star remake of Ocean's Eleven, which hits theaters December 7.
Before diving into Cruelty, Clooney must wrap Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, also with Roberts. The dark comedy, which marks his directing debut, centers on Gong Show host Chuck Barris' purported secret life as a CIA (news - web sites) assassin and is currently in production.