'The Women' are Finally Ready to Go

Now those are words every man has said at least once

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Thursday, May 31st 2007 at 6:37 AM

The Picturehouse remake of the classic 1939 Joan Crawford feature The Women from 1939 finally looks to be getting underway as director Diane English seems to have finally nailed down a cast.

Back in October 2004 the cast included Uma Thurman, Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Sandra Bullock and Ashley Judd but that list soon faded into Meg Ryan, Candice Bergen, Lisa Kudrow and Anne Hathaway back in November 2006. From that lot now only Ryan and Bergen remain, but the rest are here to roost.

Joining Ryan and Bergen are Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith and Debra Messing and an August 6 production start is already in place.

English penned the script which maintains the arch spirit of the original, and the all-female cast, but the gals aren't as relentlessly catty this time around. One nice thing also is the diversity in the cast, it should help with the humor in the film as opposed to being all white women.

The Women centers on a group of gossipy, high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily-wedded Mary Haines finds her marriage in trouble when shopgirl Crystal Allen gets her hooks into Mary's man. Naturally, this situation becomes the hot talk amongst Mary's catty friends, especially the scandalmonger Sylvia Fowler, who has little room to talk — she finds herself on a train to Reno and headed for divorce right after Mary. But with a bit of guts and daring, Mary snatches her man right back from Crystal's clutches.