Next year’s prestige pictures keep on castin’! Yesterday, we learned of Jamie Foxx’s decision to play crazy and homeless; today, we’ve got Nicole Kidman and Ralph Fiennes joining the high-toned adaptation of Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader. The Academy might as well reserve a good eight to ten nominations for this sucker. Check out this pedigree: Scott Rudin, Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack producing, Steven Daldry directing, and David Hare writing. Also, the book was one o’ them Oprah Club selections. And it takes place in Germany right after World War II. Anytime you get Ralph Fiennes near Nazis, there’s a good chance of a great movie breaking out.
According to Variety, the setting of The Reader "is contemporary Germany, where a man recounts the story of his erotic awakening in a covert love affair with an older woman in the wake of WWII."
An "erotic awakening", huh? Doesn’t that sound like a specialty blend of tea? "Erotic Awakening is one of Celestial Seasonings most popular concoctions, tinged with a hint of lavender, palm oil and ball sweat."
The Reader is set up at, where else, The Weinstein Company, and will commence principal photography this September in Berlin. This puts it on course for a theatrical release in late 2008. For those of you who can’t wait that long for your next erotic awakening, here’s something to tide you over…
