Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson started filming their romantic drama, Last Chance Harvey, in London today and… [Empire sticks head out of window, looks at dull, drizzly, cold, windswept London; resists urge to kill self] they must be demanding instant rewrites that set the story in Maui.
However, this should cheer the duo up: they’re about to be joined by five fine actors on the movie, in which Empire Awards legend Hoffman, playing a luckless jingle writer from New York, meets and falls for Thompson’s bureaucrat while visiting our great city.
And those actors are Kathy Baker, as Hoffman’s ex-wife; James Brolin, as Baker’s new husband; Eileen Atkins, as Thompson’s overbearing mother; Richard Schiff (whose very West Wing-y presence alone ensures that at least two Empire staffers will pay to see this about 20 times) as Hoffman’s tough boss; and Liane Balaban as the daughter who, it says here, brings them all together at a British wedding.
So far, so Richard Curtis – but we have high hopes for this film, not least because it’s written and directed by Joel Hopkins, a very talented British helmer who made the delightful romantic comedy, Jump Tomorrow, waaaay back in 2001. This, remarkably, is his first film since then, so we wish him well.