Chris Addison is best known as Oliver Reeder, the bespectacled subject of Peter Capaldi’s wrath in the political comedy series The Thick of It. But now the British actor is making an impressive step up to feature filmmaking with a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
The film will star Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway as women from different social classes who fight to swindle a naïve tech whizz out of his fortune in a ‘loser leaves town’ contest. Drawing from both Frank Oz’s 1988 original and the Marlon Brando-starring 1964 movie, Bedtime Story, Nasty Women will see the story updated and the protagonists’ gender reversed.
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The title recalls the infamous insult Donald Trump aimed at Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Presidential Election campaign, which was later reclaimed by feminists. It’s not yet known whether the film will be politically charged or not.
Addison has form behind the camera, having previously directed a 2012 episode of The Thick of It, as well as 13 episodes of the hit American series Veep. Jac Schaeffer, the writer/director of TiMER, is signed on to pen the screenplay.
Nasty Women will continue the recent trend of gender-swap remakes, which includes the all-female Ghostbusters and Ocean’s Eight, the Ocean’s Eleven remake starring Hathaway, Olivia Munn, Dakota Fanning, Sarah Paulson, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Sandra Bullock and Mindy Kailing, which is due out later this year.
