Recent Academy-award nominated actress Melissa Leo is set to star in the independent drama Betty Ann Waters along with Hilary Swank, Minnie Driver and Sam Rockwell.
Shooting began this week in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Tony Goldwyn directs the film that focuses on an unemployed single mother who saw her brother begin serving a life sentence in 1983 for murder and robbery. Certain of his innocence, she achieved a law degree and contested the conviction with DNA evidence, resulting in her brother being freed in 2001.
Swank’s playing the title character while Leo portrays the only woman officer at a local police station who pins the murder on him.
Tony Goldwyn looks good in the trailer for the remake of The Last House on the Left. Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham revisit their landmark film that launched Cravens directing career and influenced decades of horror films to follow. Bringing one of the most notorious thrillers of all time to a new generation, they produce the story that explores how far two ordinary people will go to exact revenge on the sociopaths who harmed their child.
Dewey, a fact-based film about a stray cat’s impact on the town of Spencer, Iowa, has Meryl Streep attached to star. It’s an adaptation of the Vicki Myron book “Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World.”
According to Variety, Streep aims to play the author, who works at the library and observes the impact that a kitten had on the townsfolk once it became the library mascot after wandering in through the after-hours book return slot on a cold night.
Dewey touched the hearts of many as his fame grew from town to town, state to state and finally, appropriately worldwide.
A very talented and well-respected writer, Pamela Gray, is set to adapt the script. Her credits include the upcoming Tony Goldwyn-directed Hilary Swank film Betty Anne Waters. Gray wrote Music of the Heart with Streep playing a violin teacher. She also wrote Goldwyn’s A Walk on the Moon, starring Diane Lane, Viggo Mortensen, and Liev Schreiber.
Hilary Swank will star in Betty Anne Waters, a drama directed by Tony Goldwyn.
The plot focuses on a single mother who worked her way through law school in order to free her brother, who was wrongfully convicted of murder.
Swank plays the title role in the true story of a high school dropout who would not surrender her belief that her brother, Kenneth, had been framed.
While raising kids and waiting tables, she worked her way through college and law school to could represent her brother after he’d used up his attempts to appeal his conviction through public defenders.
An interesting note: Goldwyn said his first meeting on the project occurred shortly after the woman’s brother was released in 2001. He’ll never forget the date, because the meeting was held in New York on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 and was cut short by news of the World Trade Center terror attacks.
