Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman will star together in May December, a new drama from director Todd Haynes.
Portman will play a Hollywood actor who travels to Maine to study a mother she plans to portray onscreen, while Moore will star as the woman in question, who 20 years ago was at the centre of a tabloid scandal after a romance with a man 23 years her junior.
As Gracie (Moore) and her husband Joe (the younger man) prepare for their twin daughters to graduate and with Elizabeth (Portman) staying with them, the family dynamics begin to unravel under the gaze of the outside world.
“What so appealed to me about Samy Burch’s exceptional script was how it navigated potentially volatile subject matter with a kind of observational patience that allowed the characters in the story to be explored with uncommon subtlety,” Haynes told Variety.
This is the sixth project Haynes will have worked on with Moore, following films including the psychological horror Safe, the 2002 period drama Far From Heaven – for which Moore received an Oscar nomination – and the 2017 mystery Wonderstruck.
Jessica Elbaum and Will Ferrell of Gloria Sanchez Productions are co-producing with Christine Vachon and Pam Koffler of Killer Films, and Portman and Sophie Mas for MountainA.
Principle photography is scheduled to begin next year.
Additional reporting by Press Association
