Whoever is in charge of casting for Us & Them must have loved films in the 1980s, as they’re filling the films with names who were pretty big back then but who’s acting star has slightly fallen in the past couple of decades. Billy Crystal & Bette Midler are already signed up for the lead role, and now Variety reports that Marisa Tomei will join them.
The 80s connection may well be because Crystal helped come up with the story, and so he’s calling in favours from those he knew when he was at the top of the game. Indeed, the screenwriters, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, were the guys who wrote City Slickers, while director Andy Fickman started out as a production executive working on Bette Midler movies like Hocus Poscus and Gypsy.
The film sees Crystal as a minor league baseball announcer who is going through a separation from his wife (Midler). Despite their split, they must both live under the same roof again with their three grandchildren, with the generation gap causing all sorts of problesm. Tomei will play their daughter, who’s estranged from her parents but whose children end up disrupting Midler & Crystal’s lives.
Shooting starts later this month.