It's been a good few months since we heard any updates on the adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel The Switch. In that time, the previously-announced Dennis Quaid had to drop out due to scheduling clashes with his TV series Vegas, but where Hollywood taketh away, it also giveth, so with his departure comes news that The Switch** may have gained Isla Fisher. Not in Quaid's role though; that would be silly. She'd be playing Melanie.
The Switch (which, as a movie, doesn't have a title yet, but that's what the book's called so we'll stick with it for now) is a stand-alone film, but given that it shares many of the same characters it's hard not to talk about it in terms of a Jackie Brown prequel.
Written 14 years before Jackie Brown's source Rum Punch, it's an earlier adventure for Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara. It involves a kidnap plot against the wife of a wealthy-but-corrupt Detroit real-estate developer, but the ransom is unforthcoming when it turns out that nobody wants her back.
Fisher's Melanie is the part inhabited by Bridget Fonda before, while Ordell (the Sam Jackson character) is this time being played by Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, and John Hawkes takes on Louis from Robert De Niro. No pressure, John. Jennifer Aniston meanwhile, is the hapless but, as it turns out, cunning and manipulative abductee Mickey Dawson, with Ty Burrel aso on-hand as a witness.
Former film editor Dan Schechter is the director, with Leonard himself among the producers. The start of shooting is currently pencilled in for February.