Like most A-list talent in Hollywood, Nicole Kidman generally has more than a few movie options cooking at any given time (though we’ll never understand why she did “Trespass”). In addition, she’s got her own production shingle which is there to develop projects that have special appeal for her. It was Kidman’s Blossom Films that developed last year’s excellent “Rabbit Hole” in conjunction with Olympus Films, marking the first project out of the gate with the actress as the star (the company was also behind the Leighton Meester thing “Monte Carlo” but we’ll politely ignore that).
Anyway, Blossom and Olympus are hoping to strike gold twice as Deadline reports they are pairing up again for “The Family Fang” as a vehicle for Kidman. They’ve acquired the rights to the bestselling Kevin Wilson novel that boasts a pretty fascinating premise. Described as a cross between “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?” and “The Royal Tenenbaums,” the story centers on a pair of performance artists who managed to get their children involved in their oddball pieces when they were growing up. Years later, misfortune has brought the children back home where they learn their parents are planning one more and final performance piece. Check out the synopsis from Amazon below:
Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art.
Their children called it mischief.
Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world.
When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance–their magnum opus–whether the kids agree to participate or not. Soon, ambition breeds conflict, bringing the Fangs to face the difficult decision about what’s ultimately more important: their family or their art.
Filled with Kevin Wilson’s endless creativity, vibrant prose, sharp humor, and keen sense of the complex performances that unfold in the relationships of people who love one another, The Family Fang is a masterfully executed tale that is as bizarre as it is touching.
Kidman is no stranger to tales of familial discord or strife and this seems to fits very comfortably in her wheelhouse, though the performance artist angle adds a nice twist. It’s in early stages, with no writer or director attached yet, so it will be a while for this. But until then you’ll have plenty of Kidman coming at you soon as 2012 will see her starring in Lee Daniels’ crime drama “The Paperboy,” Park Chan-wook‘s thriller “Stoker” and the HBO movie “Hemingway & Gellhorn.”