‘Corrections’ HBO Series Sounds Promising

I’ve been hesitant to write anything about HBO’s attempt to adapt Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections into a TV series, because the network still hasn’t greenlit a pilot. But with a talented creative team and Chris Cooper and Dianne Wiest in negotiations to play Alfred and Enid, it seems likely that it will come to fruition.

HBO is going for some serious acting firepower on the Noah Baumbach/Scott Rudin drama The Corrections. The pay cable network has Oscar winner Chris Cooper in negotiations and two-time Oscar winner Dianne Wiest set for the two leads in the project based on Jonathan Franzen’s book. The award-wining 2001 novel revolves around the troubles of an elderly Midwestern couple and their three adult children — roles that are now being cast — as they trace their lives from the mid-20th century to “one last Christmas” together near the turn of the millennium. Baumbach and Franzen co-wrote the adaptation, with Baumbach set to direct the pilot. [Deadline]

This has the potential to be excellent. Whatever complaints you might have about Franzen, he is nothing if not meticulous in his writing. As for Baumbach (director of The Squid and The Whale and the awful Margot at the Wedding; screenwriter of Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), he specializes in the sort of angsty upper-middle-class white-people drama that Franzen unspools for hundreds of pages on end. Throw in Chris Cooper with dementia and a sexy actress to play bi-curious chef Denise, and I’m sold.