Meryl Streep joins August: Osage County

Julia Roberts

Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts have signed on to star together in John Wells’ adaptation of the play August: Osage County.

Penned by playwright Tracy Letts, and based on his own life experiences, the original play is a dark comedy that has picked up the Tony for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

“The story haunted me all my adult life,” Letts has said of the work. “My grandfather's suicide and its ripple effects were things I turned over in my head for many, many years.

"I came to believe that the best vehicle to tell that story was a play with 13 characters and a three-story set - a very expansive, broad-shouldered American play.”

With Streep lined up to play Violet Weston, a drug-addicted Southern matriarch whose husband disappears, and Roberts as her oldest, control freak daughter, director John Wells is ticking all the right boxes in bringing the dramatic tale to the big screen.

Come awards season, we imagine Streep could land her 17th Oscar nomination…

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.