Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are going to have a nasty divorce.
The two British stars have signed on to star in
The Roses, Searchlight’s reimagining of the 1989 dark comedy
The War of the Roses, which starred
Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.
Jay Roach, the comedy director who segued into drama with movies such as
Recount and
Bombshell, is helming the feature that is in development at the studio arm. Tony McNamara, who earned an Oscar nomination for writing Searchlight’s acclaimed
Poor Things, penned the script, which is based on the novel published in 1981 by Warren Adler.
The original movie, directed by
Danny DeVito and released by 20th Century Fox, told of a married couple, Oliver and Barbara Rose, who seemingly live the perfect life in a perfect old mansion. When the wife realizes she no longer loves her husband, and in fact bitterly dislikes him, it precipitates divorce proceedings that start as vicious and only escalate from there, as humiliations, sabotage and violence take hold of both sides.