Deadline reports a big-name casting shuffle on one of HBO’s latest drama projects, as the network’s upcoming limited series Scenes From A Marriage has just become Scenes From A Marriage (That Michelle Williams Is No Longer A Part Of, Because It’s Jessica Chastain’s Marriage Now). Williams has been forced to depart the project over scheduling issues, because we don’t know if you’ve looked at the schedule lately, but boy howdy, are there some issues out there.
The re-casting will team Chastain back up with her old pal Oscar Isaac, who she previously co-starred with in 2014's A Most Violent Year. The two will play parts originated, respectively, by Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson in the original, highly influential Ingmar Bergman miniseries on which the new limited series is being based. (Which is also our periodic reminder that “limited series” has really just come to mean “a miniseries where we don’t want to close the door on making a sequel if it does well.”) Bergman’s version tracked 10 years in the life of a couple with a seemingly perfect marriage, who turn out to be not-so-perfect, because otherwise, you could probably have gotten it done in 5.
Hagar Levai, who previously co-created The Affair for Showtime and Our Boys for HBO, will serve as a creative lead on the series, which will air in *elaborate, untranslatable shrugging gesture that still somehow suggests that the future is fundamentally unknowable*. The original Bergman miniseries debuted in 1973.