Chris Cooper Joins AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Film

According to IndieWire, Chris Cooper has been cast in the film adaptation of Tracy Letts' August: Osage County, alongside Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. Cooper also joins the recently cast Andrea Riseborough.

Read the original report here.

The play, which originally premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf TheatreCompany, opened on Broadway in December of 2007 and was the recipient of the 2008 Tony Award for Best Play.

Tracy Lett's Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play, directed by John Wells, will see Streep and Roberts playing family matriarch Violet and her eldest daughter, respectively. Riseborough is poised to take on the role of Violet's youngest daughter, Karen. Cooper will play Violet's brother in law.

The story follows the Weston family whose lives have been "splintered in many directions until their alcoholic father's disappearance brings them back to their childhood home and to the dysfunctional woman who raised them."

The Weinstein Company acquired the rights to the play and are developing the project with George Clooney and Grant Heslov's Smokehouse Pictures. Shooting is set to begin this September for a possible 2013 release date.

Cooper's most recent film project was 2011's The Muppets. He has also appeared in The Bourne Identity, American Beauty, Jarhead, Capote, The Town, The Kingdom, The Patriot, Syriana, October Sky, Seabiscuit, Breach, The Company Men and Adaptation, which earned him an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. On Broadway, Cooper appeared in the 1980 production Of The Fields, Lately.

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