After floating around Hollywood for years with various different actors and directors attached, the Coen brothers scripted remake of the 1966 Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine flick Gambit is finally coming together properly, with Michael Hoffman (The Last Station) set to direct and Colin Firth in the lead role.
Now the female lead has been cast, with Deadline reporting that Cameron Diaz is attached to the flick. To be honest, Diaz and Firth don’t initially seem like new versions of MacLaine and Caine, but it appears the Coens have shifted things a little, so perhaps they’ll work after all.
In the original Caine played a cat burglar who tries to rob a billionaire of his priceless statue and enlists the help of a waitress who is a dead ringer for the victim’s late wife. However the remake sees Firth as a London art curator trying to con someone into buying a phony Monet. He hires a Texas steer roper (Diaz) to pose as a woman whose grandfather liberated the painting at the end of WWII.
The film is due to shoot in the UK in May.