Maggie Gyllenhaal, Greta Gerwig, and Rhys Ifans all in talks for HBO's The Corrections
Lured by the irresistible aroma of freshly baked Emmy-pie cooling on the windowsill, several more movie types are circling HBO’s The Corrections, the Noah Baumbach-directed adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s novel about one big, unhappy-in-a-timely-commentary-on-our-national-psyche family. Deadline confirms a report first circulated in The Daily Mail that Maggie Gyllenhaal, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, and Bruce Norris are all currently in talks to join the already-cast Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, and Dianne Wiest in providing the friendly faces that will make it easier to sympathize with Franzen’s many selfish, frustrating characters.
Provided they all actually sign on, Gyllenhaal would play youngest sibling Denise, the bisexual chef who gets caught up in an affair with her boss and his wife. Gyllenhaal’s Nanny McPhee Returns co-star Ifans would play the Lithuanian crime boss who ropes McGregor’s disgraced academic into a scam to defraud American investors, while Gerwig could reunite with her Greenberg director to play Julia, wife to Ifans’ character and McGregor’s soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend. And finally, actor and playwright Norris would star as oldest brother Gary, the banker with the beautiful family and everything one could want in the world, except for, as with everyone in Franzen’s book, happiness.
For many of these actors, The Corrections would be their first regular TV series role, and if The Daily Mail is to be believed, HBO will make the most of it: It reports that the plan is to have four seasons of The Corrections at 10 episodes apiece, which is certainly a long time to spend in the company of a fucked-up family that isn’t yours.